A new life and fresh hope far from Gaza
Galway became home to Noura in 2021, when the Palestinian student was awarded a scholarship to study here. As she continues her studies, this talented cook is introducing Irish people to the food of her homeland via a stall at the Galway Market. She talks to CIARAN TIERNEY about life in Gaza and Galway and how her relief at having escaped is mixed with guilt for those left behind.
When Noura* arrived in Galway in September 2021, she did not want to get involved in any protests, public meetings, or demonstrations. She felt she had trauma to unpack and heeded the advice of her father, who said that she should keep her head down and keep a low profile in Ireland.
Noura is from Gaza and arrived in Ireland after being awarded an Irish Government scholarship to study in Galway. Only four months earlier, an Israeli missile landed near her home during an intense Israeli bombardment. She thought she would not survive.
Hundreds of people were killed in Israeli air strikes in Gaza that May and she feared she would never make it to Galway, as the borders were closed for months and she had already deferred her scholarship for a year because of Covid.
“I sincerely believed I was going to die that May, because the Israeli Army were using new weapons in Gaza. We were scared all the time. I kept thinking that I was supposed to leave on a scholarship and I was supposed to survive. And now I might die,” she says.
“When I came to Ireland, I felt I was born again. I was going to appreciate every second of my new life. There was also this feeling of guilt about the people I had left behind, who were also looking for scholarships and trying to start a new life. They weren’t as lucky as I was to get out.”
As a Palestinian woman travelling through Israel, she was not allowed to bring a phone charger or even cosmetics with her, and what should have been a two-hour journey – according to Google Maps – took nine hours due to checkpoints and restrictions. She was only allowed to travel from Gaza to Amman, Jordan, in the company of Irish officials before she flew to Ireland.
Due to the Israeli blockade, Gaza had effectively been closed off from the outside world since 2007. Noura felt lucky, as she was at least allowed to travel to Jordan. Male scholarship students from Gaza were not allowed to travel through Israel at all and had to pay an extra $1,000 (US) to get out at the Egyptian border.
Noura was top of her class when she studied architecture in Gaza City. She spent years applying for scholarships to study overseas, as she saw education as a means of escape from the fear and sense of being imprisoned in Gaza. Her parents had lived abroad for some of her childhood and she knew there was another life outside Gaza’s fences and walls.
“My college years were very, very rough. I studied architecture, despite having only four hours of electricity per day. Sometimes we could not go to college because of the lack of transportation. Often there was no petrol. We could not go to the university,” she says.
“That university building is destroyed now, but people back home never cease to amaze me. I learned from my friend who is still back there that he is doing his Master’s. It’s all online. Many of the staff from the university fled to Egypt in the very first months of the genocide and they are continuing to educate online from there. The education never stopped. It gives me hope and at the same time it amazes me.”
It was a huge relief to Noura when the border was open in September 2021, and she managed to get out. She had been chosen by the Irish Government from hundreds of Palestinian applicants and is forever grateful to Ireland for the opportunities it has given her since 2021.
Her first impression of this country was striking. The customs official at Dublin Airport gave her a warm welcome after ensuring that her travel documents and university scholarship letter were in order.
“The border coming into Ireland was very strange for me,” she laughs. “No-one asked me to open my bag or to wait in a long line for a couple of hours. I stood at the customs window, waiting for something more to happen. They looked at my passport, my visa, and my scholarship letter, and then they welcomed me to Ireland. That was it! I just stood there and froze. I didn’t think I could just walk on.”
Pictured: Noura, whose brother was murdered by an Israeli drone in the border town of Rafah in 2014, doesn't want her real name used in the article or her face to feature, in case her family in Palestine face repercussions from Israel. PHOTO: JOE O'SHAUGHNESSY.