Soup kitchen offers respite to Gaza’s hungry

Gaza City / AFP

In her modest home in the Gaza Strip, Sahar Sherif’s family watches as she ladles out a broth of meat and vegetables for a rare heart-warming meal.
For just a month of the year, a soup kitchen in the Palestinian enclave is offering struggling families like Sherif’s a welcome break from daily worries about where they will find their next meal.
During the holy month of Ramadan, the charity provides the 40-year-old divorcee and her five children—and grandchildren—with a square meal every day at no cost.
“When we eat food from the tekiyya, we feel better,” says Sherif, using an Arabic name for the soup kitchen, an Islamic tradition said to date back to the era of the prophet Abraham.
But during the rest of the year when the kitchen is closed, “I make a pot of tea, I get two tomatoes out and that’s it,” she says, wearing a black nylon overcoat and complete face veil.
“When there’s no food, we constantly feel dizzy.”
Residents in the Islamist-ruled territory have lived under a punitive Israeli blockade for the last 10 years, and Egypt has largely kept its border with Gaza closed since 2013.
Nearly half the war-torn enclave’s 1.9 million inhabitants live under the poverty line, with 80 percent surviving on humanitarian aid.
Onions in cauldrons
During Ramadan, Sherif can carry home a plate of rice and chicken for her family to break the daily fast after sunset—and a broth to eat before sunrise and another 16 hours of daytime fasting.
For the rest of the year, food is one of many daunting expenses for the head of a poverty-stricken household.
“I have to pay 500 shekels (115 euros) in rent as well as water and electricity bills,” says Sherif, whose two sons are unemployed. “I receive 100 to 200 shekels in support, but I’m supposed to pay the rest on my own,” she says.
The Gaza Strip has been ravaged by three wars with Israel since 2008, after the Islamist movement Hamas consolidated its rule over the Palestinian territory.