Who is the invading woman who called the ship "Madeleine", after?
"Zinana is above! We cannot sleep from her," Madeleine Kalbab said when we conducted an interview with her while it was clear in the background the sound of the Israeli drones that the people of the Gaza Strip call the "adultery".
Madeleine continues by saying: "Since the beginning of the war, everything has changed, our lives have turned, we were displaced, we lived in tents, we slept over the sand, we slept in the street, we lost all the fishing belongings we had ... our boats and others."
Madeleine introduced herself as a "Palestinian fisherman", as she was one of the few women, if she was not the only one to pursue fishing in the Gaza Strip before the war erupted on October 7, 2023.
The story of Madeleine has inspired activists known as the "Freedom Fleet coalition", to give its name on the 36th ship, which tried to reach the Gaza Strip, loaded with a symbolic amount of aid, with the aim of "breaking the Israeli siege imposed on Gaza," says the activists.
The selection of that name was symbolic aimed at "highlighting the suffering suffered by the category of fishermen in Gaza and also to support women in the Strip", according to the organizers.
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The ship Madeleine did not succeed in reaching the Gaza Strip, as the Israeli forces detained the ship and those on board and took them towards an Israeli port.
BBC spoke with Madeleine Kalbab, to tell us her story with the sea in Gaza, the conditions of her life during the ongoing war in the Strip, and her feeling of the name "Madeleine" in her name.
"Since the early days"
Madeleine, 31, says that she started to hunt fish with her father since her childhood, and when she was thirteen years old, her father fell ill, and she was forced to continue in the fishing profession, as she is the family profession and "her only livelihood."
Madeleine is not only a fisherman, but the mother of four children as well, and she is in her second month, and she shows her fear of the future that awaits children in the Gaza Strip and says: "More than a year and a half of our children have gone in vain, no education, no decent life, no play, we have no ingredients for life, we have no electricity, no water, we have to walk long distances to get water."
But all of these circumstances that Madeleine lives every day did not prevent her from taking a space from memory to tell us the form of her life as an increase before the war in the Gaza Strip.
"We used to wake up in the morning, we prepare ourselves, and sometimes we start on our evening if the hunting was available in the evening, it was a beautiful life, although the sea in Gaza did not provide a lot of hunting, but at least we could find what we eat," says Madeleine, then you discuss and add: "We did not live in luxury, but we were able to provide food for our children, and most importantly we were safe We sleep whenever we want, we wake up whenever we want, we leave our children without fear for them, everything was available, but today, nothing is there. "
"We have nothing left for us."
Despite her dreamy tone in talking about abstract memories of the pre -war period, this did not prevent her from mentioning the "dangers" that surrounded the work of the fishing profession.
"We were only allowed to fish within a distance of three miles, and when we were risking approaching the border areas to restore our networks that we usually lost because of the marine currents, we were under fire, or confiscating our boats. If one of us wanted to hunt at sea without risk, he must stay within only two miles from the beach, which is an abundant area of fish."
"From our house, to Al -Shifa Hospital, then to Khan Yunis, Rafah, to Deir Al -Balah, and Al -Nasirat," Madeleine multiple these areas not to get to know the geography of Gaza, but rather to give us a glimpse of the path of its displacement during the war.
Madeleine describes the first days of the war that turned her life upside down, and she says: "The preoccupation of us at the beginning was to store a little supplies, it did not occur in our minds that we would be displaced, but we were displaced for the first time 10 days after the war began."
Madeleine continues: "I have never returned to my home, or to the area where I was hunted, we have made displacement forget everything, we no longer have anything, I did not try during the war to return to the sea, we no longer have anything, no boats nor anyone."
"I felt proud"
The connection then was interrupted with Madeleine during our corresponding procedures with her, then the connection returned to say that the Internet was cut off and then returned, to tell us the story of naming the ship "Madeleine" in her name.
"A Canadian activist, who knows me as a fish of fish, communicated with me, and he told me that they want to name a boat starting to Gaza, after my name, because they see that I have struggled in my life, and that I am a success story in a profession that is limited to men, they told me that he is a peaceful boat, carrying only some supplies and food for the people of Gaza."
"He made me feel proud, because someone cares about my story and cares about me," says Madeleine, then she continues to describe her feeling towards the ship's journey: "We were following the news of the ship first -hand, and we hoped that you could reach Gaza, despite our knowledge that it would be arrested in the end."
"They know my story as a clinic since 2012, and they know how much I have suffered in my life and how much I struggled, and they know how much I suffered during the war, accompanied by my four children, so they wanted my honor to name the ship in my name."
“My message is that we are peaceful, we are running for our livelihood, all our concern before the war was to provide our children bread and food, we only want to live a decent life, and we only want safety and peace, we want to lift the siege, and to end the war, we cannot continue this fear and hunger, we are people who want to live.” This was the answer Naming the ship in its name.
"The Madeleine ship revived Madeleine again, and I told everyone that Madeleine is still here, struggling, working, educating children, and her life's security to secure a prosperous future for her children," says Madeleine.
"I want it with chicken"
“My husband is a hunter, and his family is one of the fishermen, and we got to know each other through hunting, and all he and his family possess, and all that they built throughout their lives lost during the war.” This was the story of Madeleine with her husband, who resulted in a six -year -old Sandy family, Safinaz with five years, three -year beauty, and a year and a half.
Madeleine tells the story of her daily suffering in dealing with the requests of her children that she cannot meet because of war and siege, and she says: "We cannot provide anything from what our children ask, whether chicken, fruits or others, because it does not exist at all, sometimes my daughter tells me, I want to eat" kabsa " -a dish that is prepared in the Middle East from rice, chicken and spices -I say to her: I will bring it to you Only rice, you refuse and say: I want them with chicken, my children watch via the Internet, such as bananas, apples and watermelon, so they ask them, but even the available price is high, the price of a small watermelon in Gaza reaches $ 50, one cannot buy it at this price, we hope that the siege will be removed, because we are tired. "
"The sea is suffering"
Madeleine's life was not only limited to the hunting profession that has never been without suffering, which she was forced from an early age to provide a livelihood, she has repeatedly tried other doors, as she learned to design fashion at the age of 16, but she was not able to work in this profession because of the lack of opportunities. At the age of twenty -first, Madeleine joined one of the colleges with a "executive secretary" specialization, but she did not obtain her testimony because of her inability to pay the study fees.
Madeleine completed her life as she knew her at an early age, as a fish of fish, a profession that she was also seeing a "hobby", but this did not mean that she did not bring additional suffering to her life. "The fishing profession is my hobby since my childhood, but I was forced to it as a profession, and the circumstances were not Salih, the prices of fuel are high, and a boat engine was always broken, and hunting was a little. In addition, the weather conditions are added, from a hot sun in the summer, cold in the winter, the sea is suffering, I suffered a lot, I need another twenty years of words to express the amount of my suffering The profession.
Madeleine concluded her interview with us with another interruption of the Internet, but that did not prevent us from hearing recent words from her that indicate the extent of her attachment to the sea:
"In my childhood, our house was far away from the sea, the school bus did not take me to the house, but rather to a small tent that my father was erected at the sea, where it was launched to hunt the fish, so I found my father and he put a jug of tea on the fire, and he equipped us with some grilled fish."
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