It Could Happen Here - We Are Not Numbers, We Are People: A Conversation with Gaza Parkour (part 1)

Episode Date: April 29, 2024

James and Shereen talk to Ahmed and Abdullah from Gaza Parkour about how it feels to be outside of Gaza watching the horrors unfold and how listeners can stand in solidarity with the people of Gaza. https://gofund.me/f6b1f7beSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. Welcome to Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get real and dive straight into todo lo actual y viral. We're talking musica, los premios, el chisme, and all things trending in my cultura. I'm bringing you all the latest happening in our entertainment world and some fun and impactful interviews with your favorite Latin artists, comedians, actors, and influencers. Each week, we get deep and raw life stories, combos on the issues that matter to us, and it's all packed with gems, fun, straight-up comedia,

and that's a song that only Nuestra Gente can sprinkle. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Call Zone Media. Today, Shreen and I are talking to our friends at PK Gaza, Ahmed and Abdullah. You might remember them from an episode we did last October, and I've interviewed them before for Men's Health magazine in the UK. PK Gaza is a group that teaches parkour and free running to young people in the Gaza Strip.

They've been doing this for a long time, and they have some great videos you can find all over social media and YouTube. Both Ahmed and Abdullah had the opportunity to leave Gaza. Ahmed now lives in Sweden, Abdullah lives in Italy. We spoke a couple of weeks ago, but very little has changed since then. And I just wanted to note that Abdullah's audio is a little bit rough, but we thought what he had to say was really important. So we hope that you'll take the time to listen to it. My name is Ahmad Matar. I am 28 years old at the moment. I'm Palestinian from Gaza.

Currently, I live in Sweden since eight years ago. And yeah, I live in Sweden. I work with parkour and I live from parkour. And that's what i do here and the last summer was my first time visiting gaza since eight years and yeah but i'm back in sweden i was back in sweden one month before the war started again and yeah a lot of a lot of things to say a lot of things to express and but yeah that's me ahmed matar 20 years old from gaza hello guys nice to meet you all i'm abdul gasab and I'm 27 years old.

I'm also Palestinian. I'm proud of that. I'm from Gaza City originally, and I live in Italy right now for almost three years. We wanted to talk to them about how it feels to be outside of Gaza and wake up every day wondering if a bomb has killed your family or if your family is getting enough to eat. How have you been coping with like dealing with it's bad enough for those of us who don't have family watching the horrible things that happen every day and like every morning you look on your phone and it's something worse how has it been for you guys just to give people an insight into how you're coping from my From my side, I can say, yeah, life is stopped since the day that the war started.

Six months since this war and every day just watching the news. I go to work and then I come back. While I'm at work, I'm just watching the news. I'm listening to the news. And that was my life since six months at the moment and i don't feel to do anything else i cannot feel like to train i cannot feel like to enjoy or to forget what's going on there because it's my family there my friends my people going on there because it's my family there my friends my people if i feel like i want to forget about it and feel like i'm i'm like betraying my my people my family so i prefer to just watch the

news feel the same as them and just do my best to help them with what I can. But it's actually like I just feel helpless at the moment that I cannot do anything to them in a situation like this at the moment. Abdullah said that when he chose to leave Gaza, it was one of the most difficult moments of his entire life. He knew that if he stayed, there wasn't much hope for his future and he'd have to give up on so many of his dreams that would be achievable if he hadn't been born in an open-air prison. Now that he's left, he can pursue his dreams in Italy, but he struggles to express how difficult he has been finding being so isolated and distant from his friends and family. I mean, one of the most important things in our life, if it's not

really the most important, is family. Since I really left Italy, it was not really easy for me because I knew that I would be alone and I would be away from my family. But I took that decision because I knew that somehow I had to, let's say, somehow to sacrifice. And because, you know, I was focusing somehow on my future, my goals, which was not really almost impossible. It's impossible to do it where I was, which is going to say it was the hardest decision I've made ever in my life. That's even before anything already started. I'm going to explain how I feel since months back.

I'm sure that everybody knows right now if he's going to put himself in my place, that he wouldn't have the right words to express his feeling. And I'm sure I'm someone right now who doesn't really have the right words to express it and to tell you what I feel and how I feel. Because it's not something that's easy for anyone to experience in his life. So that's how I feel. We wanted to ask them how they were able to keep in touch with their families. I remember I was talking to Ahmed in October and like we were talking about how hard it was just to find out if your families were okay every day right like just to contact them and check is that still the case like how has it been just trying to contact your families

over the last six months it is actually still the same that they have to try calling and calling and calling the whole day until they catch up like the connection is cut off or it's almost like impossible to get connected with them so i have to try the whole day until like i get someone answering me because it's like i guess it's because it's a small place where they are like in rafa and there is more than one and a half million people and the everyone is trying to call to gaza and to check with everybody in there so it's make it hard to to get connected easily with them so i try like every day and yeah for sure i in the end it's it's better than before at the moment when they were in canyons it was like that i had to ask my friends who live close to my area and then they tell me if my family are okay or not and sometimes i i'm having no

information about them for for a whole week and just worried if everything is okay with them. At the moment, I just wish for the best. That's what I am at home wishing everything is okay with them, but without knowing if it's them or another family who got bombed. Because the TV is not showing a name or a family anymore because it's you know you're talking about more than 35 000 people got getting killed and to mention the names of every person getting killed it's something impossible in the media i guess i just want to mention how how does it feel

for anyone who's really listening right now how does it feel if you know that you know someone who's really the most important in your life and you know that he's in danger somehow and you're trying to call one day two day through three days or even for a week sometimes sometimes they're going to happen two weeks and three weeks and you know that people they are dying every day and it might be someone from your family that you know might something you know happen and you cannot reach them because of the signal because of the the connection, or whatever it is. How would you feel? Ahmed said he hadn't actually seen his family for nearly a month

because they hadn't had good enough signal for a call. Abdullah, on the other hand, hasn't even seen a picture of his family since bombs began to fall on the place where he grew up six months ago. Like, I have not seen my family, like, face-to-face on a camera for more than three weeks at the moment. The moment I saw them, they have to go somewhere really high, building, so they can have internet. That's if they get this internet,

and in the same time it's very dangerous for them to go on high buildings so yeah you know sometimes when my father sent me a picture of him on messenger more than a month ago and then i was like just shocked how to see his white hair like oh gray hair everywhere and he just changed in these six months totally like i would not recognize the same person like he was before the war because i was there seven months ago in gaza and he was totally young like you know he's he's just 50 years but it's not that he had gray hair everywhere like how i saw in his picture and then i see how suffering they are facing how tough life they are having at the moment just through his face his uh yeah his picture that he sent to me which is really just for sure hard to see that how how they are growing too fast because of this genocide.

To be honest, I just want to add that I'm happy that you Ahmed had the chance to to see your father I still for the last six months I didn't see a picture or I didn't talk to meet you all my family just understand I they really risk their life to to go and talk to me and then I always I also tell them to not do that when I when I see them going to that building where they go to get the internet I was just telling them go home be at a safer area but still like they tell me there is no safe area there is no safe area and there is it's the same anywhere but then it's still like yeah it's uh it gave more fear that when you're on a high building any any high building getting targeted in gaza

hi i'm ed zitron host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field. And I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I

love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com.

Hola mi gente, it's Honey German and I'm bringing you Gracias, Come Again, the podcast where we dive deep into the world of Latin culture, dot com. We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators, sharing their stories, struggles, and successes. You know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love. Each week, we'll explore everything from music and pop culture to deeper topics like identity, community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente, and life stories. sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente, and life stories. Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba.

He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian, Elian. Elian Gonzalez. Elian, Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with.

His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I have been having an extremely hard time looking at what's happening through my phone,

witnessing the suffering of people who might as well be my family. They all look and sound like my cousins, my aunts, my uncles, my parents, my siblings. I can't even imagine experiencing this if it was my actual family. I genuinely do not know how I could cope with not being able to reach them for months or not even knowing if they're okay. I wanted to know if Ahmed and Abdullah have found ways to cope, or at least ways to get through each day. Do you guys have a community that you can reach out to?

Do you guys talk to each other a lot? How do you guys stay sane? Like, how do you not lose your mind as everyone else goes about their life? We talk to each other, me and Abdullah, almost every day in the evening. We spend like more than four hours at least in a call and besides that yeah while we are sitting calling each other we are watching the news and yeah we have to be informed about everything is happening that's how it make us feel better at least to to know what's going on and to follow the news thing else can

help it i think i would not feel happy to go and enjoy while my family is not enjoying and yeah i don't feel good about it it's not that i i should enjoy it's I feel like I'm not gonna enjoy until my family is safe until my family is enjoying and this is gonna take years I guess you know the trauma the aroma is that affected them from this genocide is gonna take a while to heal to cover they they will take long time to cover from this and I don't know if I am affected by it or not but you know my life as I told you has been just watching news for six months and nothing else I don't know how is that affecting me in the long run, like after the war ends.

But for me, parkour has always been a way to recover and I'm sure parkour will help me later. I'm always trying to stay and to talk to myself because I guess it's really important. Everybody has to talk to himself because it's the most important thing that yeah I'm talking about your positive respect to people really try not to lose your mind try just to be normal because at the end anyway you don't have anything that you can do in your hand know, that you cannot change something. Like I really have a friend of mine that I really told her,

I'm really proud of myself that at least I'm trying to stay normal. I'm trying to keep myself and act as a normal person. But the main question is, I don't know

where I would be able to. I'm afraid that once it's going to happen, that I'm going to lose everything and I'm going to destroy everything. Of course, sometimes I'm trying to get out. I'm not trying to be alone. I'm just trying to keep my mind and my life a little bit more busy as much as I can. I've known Abdullah and Ahmed and several other members of PK Gaza since 2020. I worked on a story about them in 2021, which was about the last time I could sell stories on Gaza, because for the most part, you only get to write about people in Gaza when they're dying.

I asked him about the well-being of some of the other members of the team. Saeed, yeah, he's in our thoughts all the time. And we will never forget him, for sure. Saeed was like the last person I saw in Gaza when I left Gaza. And he was with me, helping me with everything, so I can leave from Gaza to Egypt. So he was helping me with all the process I need in the crossing area because it's very busy and you need to know people in the crossing area so they can fix you and help you and carry my stuff with me. And I know Saeed since I was born, I can say. Saeed's father and my father are very close friends.

And since I grew up, like since I started to be aware of this life, I met Saeed. And we were friends, neighbors, we were always playing together and then we decided to go for a Kung Fu club and we started to train Kung Fu and martial arts together and at the age of nine years me and Saeed also met Abdullah and met the other guys who does also martial arts so we started to do martial arts together and then we met the parkour guys Muhammad Al-Jakbir and Abdullah Al-Shasi which made us turn into parkour after and everything I was doing in like in my sports life and outside of my sports life I was always meeting said as a friend as a brother and we were at

each other's houses and the eating together and yeah so it was really meaning a lot to me because I have always known him as the good guy who helped everyone who needs help. And lately, Said was the manager of the parkour academy that we created there. And he was taking care and teaching kids for free and volunteering and putting from his time so more kids can go there and learn parkour and my brother was one of them and he was helping him and during this war Saeed was the only one that informs me about my family in Gaza about how they are because he was the only one who was connected to the internet at that time. So I was going through him about my family and we were talking every

day during this war and suddenly I just saw news about him that he got killed together with his brothers while trying to rescue some people from under the rubble and then another rocket bombed them and killed them all. I could not understand it. Still cannot believe that Said is gone. It's something that I would not believe that they go to Gaza and Said is not there. I cannot imagine how it feels to his father, to his mother,

that they lost the three of their sons at once. Yeah, but Said will always be in our memory, in our heart, that we will never forget. Palestinians, they are really different than anybody else. When the bomb is really happening, everybody is just trying to escape, everybody is just trying to run away. What Said and his brothers did, they just went after that building was bombed, they just went to help others, to take others from under the rappel, you know, to help them to see if they are injured if they can help others

and that was their fault that they were trying just to help others and then they could bomb three of them that's what happened and that's what most of the Palestinian dance but they were really

brave and yeah it's such a rose that nobody can imagine It's hard enough losing a friend so suddenly it's even harder when you have been able to see them for months and never got to

say goodbye we asked about the last time they spoke to their friend and we asked them to share some of their memories of him. So he was, Saeed was telling me, listen to this sound. And then while listening, I was just hearing shooting. And then he was telling me, this is a quadcopter. The quadcopter is like a drone that is developed to shoot at the same time so it can film and see everything moving and shooting it at the same time.

So it can kill people which is moving. And he tells me that everything is moving in this area. Everything is moving around us is getting shot. And he was at his home and together with his family. And I was telling him just said leave the area go somewhere that is better and safer or something that you don't have to hear this sound that you maybe can get killed inside your home because you know this quadcopters is a drone that can go inside windows anything that it can go from the roof and enter your home and yeah that's uh what he told me what he told me was like yeah but if i

leave home i will get killed and if i if i leave another place i will also get killed because it's not safe anywhere. It's the same. So if I die at our home or outside our home it's the same. And in the end I go to the heaven directly. It's better for me. And that's what he was saying. And that's what he received. He wanted the heaven I guess. But we wanted him back in our life, we did not want

him to go but yeah, that's life the good people from us always That's the end of part one, but we'll be back tomorrow with the second part of our interview with Ahmed and Abdullah from Gaza Parkour.

It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals.

You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into Tex Elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search,

Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. Welcome to Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get real and dive straight into todo lo actual y viral. We're talking musica, los premios, el chisme, and all things trending in my cultura. I'm bringing you all the latest happening in our entertainment world and some fun and impactful interviews with your favorite Latin artists, comedians, actors, and influencers. Each week, we get deep and raw life stories, combos on the issues that matter to us, and it's all packed with gems, fun, straight-up comedia, and that's a song that only nuestra gente can sprinkle.

Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.