对我们许多人来说，随着周围的空间被压缩，我们与水接触的需求反而日益增长。
For many of us, the need to be in contact with the water has grown as the space around us has been constricted.
在这里的加沙，战争改变了一切，甚至连大海也不例外。在漫长炎热的夏天，孩子们要么清晨，要么日落前去海滩。他们绕过垃圾堆和流离失所家庭的帐篷，涉入被污水污染的海水中。然而，他们还是去了。我们所有人都去了。我想我们永远都会去。
Here in Gaza, war has changed everything, even the sea. During the long, hot summer, children went to the beach either early in the morning or just before sunset. They stepped around piles of garbage, and the tents of displaced families, to wade into water contaminated by sewage. And yet, they went. We all did. And I think we always will.
我最近开始设定每天走一万步的目标，以恢复体形。为达到这个数字，我从家走到海滨大道再折返。我坚持了一个月。去海边再回来的距离恰好是一万步。这意味着，其实我的目的从来不是步数，而是地中海。
I recently started aiming to take 10,000 steps a day, to get back in shape. To reach that number, I walk from my home to the seafront road and back. I have been doing this for a month now. The distance to the shore and back happens to be 10,000 steps. Which means that, really, my aim was never the step count, but the Mediterranean.
我日落前出发，那时酷热稍有缓解。虽说从未真正凉快过。七八月湿度最重，有时高达86%。走着走着，我看着阳光铺洒在水面上，又缓缓消退。
I go before sunset, when the heat starts to ease slightly. Not that it ever gets truly cool. July and August brought the worst of the humidity, which sometimes reached 86 percent. As I walk, I watch the sunlight stretch across the water before it slowly disappears.
仍有几个孩子在海滩上放风筝。放风筝在战前和战时的加沙都很常见——就在一个月前，海面上空几乎时刻布满风筝——但现在这成了一种反抗行为，因为以色列方面表示将把放风筝视为敌对行为，理由是战前风筝曾被用来向以色列发射燃烧装置。
A few children still fly kites along the beach. Kite-flying was common in Gaza before the war and even during it—just a month ago, the sky above the sea was full of kites almost constantly—but now it has become an act of defiance, because the Israelis have said that they will treat kite-flying as a hostile act, on the grounds that kites were sometimes used, before the war, to launch incendiary devices into Israel.
过去，孩子们用文具店买来的彩纸和木棍做风筝。现在他们就地取材，利用一切能找到的东西。有人用干枯的棕榈叶。我遇到一个男孩，用一根长木头雕出风筝骨架；其他人用塑料袋编织骨架，或用曾装面粉和食品援助的麻袋，用废弃笔记本的碎页拼接边缘。
In the past, children fashioned kites from brightly colored paper and wooden sticks they bought at stationery stores. Now they improvise, using whatever they can find. Some work with dry palm fronds. I met a boy who had carved his kite’s frame from a long piece of wood; others weave frames from plastic bags, or from the sacks that once carried flour and food aid, joining the edges with torn scraps from old notebooks.
加沙的每个人都是海边人。这25英里的海岸线不仅仅是散步或放风筝的地方；它是通往外部世界的窗口。在过去的夏天，整个加沙似乎都聚集在海边——坐在沙滩上，或者在靠近公路的木椅上。孩子们在水里进进出出，或者花点小钱骑着骆驼或马在水边奔跑。小贩们卖烤玉米、苦豆子和棉花糖，在毯子间穿梭叫卖甜茶和炒瓜子。
Everyone in Gaza is a sea person. That 25-mile coastline is more than a place to walk or fly a kite; it’s a point of access to the outside world. In past summers, all of Gaza would seem to be at the shore—sitting on the beach, or maybe higher up, in wooden chairs near the road. Children dashed in and out of the water, or rode camels or horses along the water for a small fee. Vendors sold grilled corn, lupin beans, and cotton candy, circulating among the blankets with sweet tea and roasted seeds.
一些家庭就在海岸线边搭起帐篷。人们在那里自拍或拍婚纱照。空气中弥漫着玉米和木炭的香气；你能听到西洋双陆棋子的碰撞声、水烟点燃的嘶嘶声。有时海浪声几乎淹没了其他所有声音。
Some families pitched tents right at the shoreline. People posed there for selfies or wedding photos. The air smelled of corn and charcoal; you’d hear the clatter of backgammon stones, the hiss of a narghile being lit. Sometimes the sound of the sea drowned out nearly everything else.
我对海边最持久的记忆之一来自2023年7月。我的侄子侄女们在沙子里挖洞把自己埋起来，然后跑去水里冲洗，再回来重新开始挖。大人游泳、假装游泳，把不游泳的人硬推进水里。我们劈开一个西瓜，希望它熟透了——甜得刚好、红得透亮，还带着点沙子，就是我们喜欢的味道。我6岁左右时，父母带我们去海边劈西瓜吃，就像这样。
One of my enduring memories of the seashore is from July 2023. My nephews and nieces dug holes in the sand to bury themselves, then ran to the water to wash off, then came back to start digging all over again. The adults swam, pretended to swim, pushed whoever wasn’t swimming into the water anyway. We cracked open a watermelon, hoping it would be ripe—too sweet, too red, and a little sandy, the way we liked it. When I was about 6 years old, my parents took us to the beach to crack open a watermelon just like that.
兄弟姐妹们回忆起来还在笑：我们去大海边就只是为了吃个西瓜然后回家？没游泳、没玩、没散步——就吃西瓜，然后回家。现在我们当时做这些事的那片沙滩，已变成临时难民营，挤满了从加沙地带北部和南部流离失所的家庭。
My siblings and I still laugh about this when we remember: Did we go to the sea just to eat a watermelon and go home? No swimming, no playing, no walking—just the watermelon, and then back. Now the stretch of sand where we did this has become a makeshift camp crowded with families displaced from the north and south of the Gaza Strip.
我们有200多万人生活在一条长约25英里、宽约7.5英里的狭长土地上。这使得加沙成为地球上人口最稠密的地方之一。战前，无论从哪个方向离开加沙地带都需要许可证。但大海不要求任何东西。你不需要证件就能看它、涉足其中、让目光追随它延伸至没有无人机或检查站的地平线。大海是我们敞开的地平线，是我们需要透气时去的地方。心情不好时，母亲会让我去那里。
We are more than 2 million people living on a ribbon of land about 25 miles long and seven and a half miles wide. This makes Gaza one of the most densely populated places on earth. Before the war, to leave the Strip from any direction required a permit. But the sea asked for nothing. You didn’t need a document to look at it, to wade into it, to let your eyes follow it to a horizon with no drone or checkpoint in sight. The sea was our open horizon, the place we went when we needed to breathe. When I was in a bad mood, my mother would tell me to go there.
战前最后几年，海岸线上排列着旅游设施：度假木屋、游乐园、餐厅和其他设施，每年夏天迎接数千名游客。现在这些大多已不复存在，仅存的少数也只有极少数特权阶层才消费得起。整个加沙地带物价高企，空袭持续，约一半加沙人现在住在帐篷里，几乎无法抵挡酷热的夏季高温。随着所谓的“黄线”向西扩展，将人们推向大海，加沙超过60%的地区已变得无法进入。对我们许多人来说，随着周围空间的压缩，接触水的需求日益增长：一个人需要一个地方——任何地方——来逃离被困住的感觉。
In the last years before the war, the shore was lined with tourist facilities: chalets, amusement parks, restaurants, and other amenities that welcomed thousands of visitors every summer. Now these are mostly gone, and the few that remain are affordable for only a privileged few. Throughout the Strip, prices are high, air strikes continue, and about half of Gazans now live in tents, which offer little shelter from the scorching summer heat. More than 60 percent of Gaza has become inaccessible, as the so-called yellow line expands westward, pushing people ever closer to the sea. For many of us, the need to be in contact with the water has grown as the space around us has constricted: A person needs a place—any place—to escape the feeling of being trapped.
几周前，我遇到了一位名叫哈桑·谢哈达的渔民。他告诉我，加沙的港口服务和许多渔船在战争中被毁，由于以色列海军开火，出海仍然很危险。战前，他和其他渔民——其中一些是他的兄弟姐妹和堂表亲——能捕获足够养活他八口之家的鱼，还能赚取收入。现在他缺乏曾经让这份工作成为可能的渔船和设备。
A few weeks ago, I met a fisherman named Hasan Shehada. He told me that Gaza’s port services and many of its fishing boats had been destroyed in the war, and that going out on the water is still dangerous because of Israeli naval fire. Before the war, together with other fishermen, some of them his siblings and cousins, he could bring in enough fish to feed his eight-member family and still earn an income. Now he lacks the boats or equipment that once made this work possible.
“战争也改变了我们的海，”他告诉我。“有时我坐在海滩上哭泣，想着我们曾经在哪里，现在又在哪里。” 季节正在更替。对于住在海岸边帐篷里的家庭来说，大海不再是休憩之地：风吹沙尘钻进万物，空气沉重潮湿，帐篷对即将到来的寒冷所能提供的庇护，正如对刚刚退去的酷热一样微薄。尽管如此，它们依然被拼凑修补，以抵御白昼可能带来的一切。或许眺望大水能让这一切变得可忍受——哪怕只是片刻，凝视更辽阔的事物，能让我不去看那些帐篷。
“The war has changed our sea too,” he told me. “Sometimes I sit on the beach and cry, thinking about where we were and where we are now.”Now the season is turning. For the families living in tents along the shore, the sea is no longer a place of rest: The sand is windblown and gets into everything, the air is heavy with humidity, and the tents will protect their occupants from the coming cold as little as they did them from the heat that has only just subsided. Still they are patched together against whatever the day might bring. Perhaps looking out at the water will make this bearable—will allow me not to see the tents, if only for a moment, by fixing my eyes on something wider.
有时我会自问：如果加沙没有大海会怎样？如果它是内陆国家会怎样？我不敢让自己去设想答案。
Sometimes I ask myself: What if Gaza had no sea? What if it were landlocked? I cannot let myself contemplate the answer.