On the occasion of the current catastrophe in the Middle East, we've invited authors from the region to write stories, poems and essays in order to draw attention to a different truth from the "breaking news" from this region.

How are you, Lamar? I hear you're having a hard time adjusting to everything that's happening in your beloved Gaza. We're having a hard time adjusting too. I, in particular, face this difficulty, especially when it comes to going to the toilet. As you know, I've long suffered from a small, irritable bladder, which sometimes forces me to go several times an hour. So imagine the scene: fifteen minutes squirming in front of the toilet door, behind a queue of women and girls. Some of them come here simply for a moment's privacy -it's the only place they can find it.

I've started to get used to the sound of the bombing and the noise of the people in the hospital, but I still can't get used to the lack of privacy when I go to the toilet. Staying there a while, to find a space of one's own, becomes a luxury, especially in such circumstances. You'd think that the queue would spill over in front of the toilet door, but in reality, all these women and girls cram into this small room, in front of two doors that are almost always closed. The space is no more than two square metres and the temperature in the hospital is around thirty degrees, or at least that's what it feels like.

Fatena Al-Ghorra is a Palestinian-born author with five collections of poetry to her credit, three of which have been translated into Spanish, Italian and Dutch.

As the women wait their turn, they pass the time: they chat, pluck their eyebrows, comb their hair (usually hidden twenty-four hours a day), wash their clothes in the only sink or perform their ablutions. And you, my love, can imagine the state of the floor: stagnant water mixed with soap scum, hair, sand and dust that accumulate.
One day, after trying to control myself and reduce the number of times I had to go to the bathroom, I didn't manage. I rushed over, reaching to open the door, but was surprised by a hand closing it - a young girl stood there in front of the door like a cemetery caretaker, preventing me from entering. I told her I wanted to come in, and she replied that her mother was inside, washing herself. The blood boiled in my veins, and I tried to reopen the door, explaining the urgency, adding that ablutions shouldn't prevent me from relieving myself. She grabbed my hand forcefully, and at this point I couldn't take it any more. What insolence! What audacity, making herself the judge of who can enter and who must, literally, hold back until they pee themselves!
This escalated into a verbal altercation, which eventually ended with me forcing my way into the toilet. But even inside, the place is often frightening: the sound of bombing seems amplified, and the fear that something might happen while you're locked in there never leaves you. A woman told me that one day, while standing on the toilet and sticking her head out the window to smoke a cigarette, she suddenly found herself being thrown violently back against the door by the blast of a nearby bombardment.

The bathroom can also become a refuge for a cigarette that is impossible to smoke elsewhere, in a situation where smoking, especially for a woman, is frowned upon in a conservative society, while war rages outside. I was talking to my sister-in-law about my bladder problem and my difficulties in controlling it when she told me about a simple exercise she used to do with her son Ahmed when he was little. She explained that this method had helped her overcome her problem: "When you sit down to urinate, don't let it all go at once. Try to control the flow and release it in stages."

I started practicing this method over the next few days, and it produced almost magical results. I've managed to sleep without feeling the pull of my bladder, even though sometimes it's only a matter of one or two drops that come out only with great difficulty, as if they were taking my breath with them. It's a small joy in the midst of tragedy, a tiny victory invisible to the naked eye, lost in a sea of disappointments, near and far. Did I mention disappointment? Oh, Lamar, how deeply it has marked and changed us.

I've never been a smoker, but a morning cigarette accompanied by a cup of coffee is an absolute necessity for any communication with the world. Here, I've often made do with half a cigarette, smoking it in the bathroom by stealth and various stratagems. I enter, lower the toilet lid, climb on top and stand with my feet resting on the lid. I light my cigarette as I poke my head out of the window.

Outside, the shelling shakes the building, while knocks on the door urge me to get out. Sometimes I ignore them, but they irritate me every time. I have no more logical answer to give them than a single phrase: "I'm constipated." This excuse often seems acceptable to the women waiting behind the door, but some of them start joking about it, as if to let me know that if I'm in the toilet for this long, they know full well it's for some other reason - maybe because they're doing the same thing.

 Finishing my cigarette hastily, I spray a little air freshener behind me, in case the smell lingers, although I'm always careful to stick my head as far out of the window as possible. Finally, I step out with a sigh of relief, happy that once again I've made it out of the corridor without incident or scandal.
Once, it almost turned into a scandal when a man who, judging by his clothes and beard seemed to be one of the sterner of them, started shouting that he could smell smoke coming from the toilet. He was indignant, saying that we were at war and this behaviour was unacceptable, before starting to deliver a powerful sermon. I pretended not to look at him, until a small child's voice rose in reply: "The men's toilets are full of cigarette butts." The sheikh then fell silent, as if the words had been ripped from him, unable to continue his role as religious censor.

What the child said was a real lifeline for all the women present, a relief for those who, like me, dreaded that our little secret would be revealed and expose us to stares and gossip. These women were only looking for a brief moment with a stray cigarette, a benign indulgence that was nobody's business but their own. A simple pleasure, insignificant to others, but which for them, represented a parenthesis in the war, a respite from the omnipresent smell of death and destruction. A suspended moment before a death that could strike at any moment.

This text is part of a war diary that I kept during my first visit to Gaza after fifteen years away. I recount the experience of being trapped with my family among thousands of displaced people in the Al-Quds hospital in Tel al-Hawa - my family's home.
The diary will be published at the end of the year in Arabic by Mediterranean Publishing in Italy and in Dutch by EPO in Belgium and Jurgen Maas in the Netherlands.