Up First from NPR - A Palestinian Reporter Returns Home to Gaza City

Episode Date: March 16, 2025

Anas Baba is NPR's eyes and ears on the ground in Gaza. He's also one of the only Palestinian journalists working full time for an American news organization in Gaza. Israel has banned international journalists from independent access to the territory throughout this war. But Baba is from Gaza City, and he chose to stay and report when the war began. Today on The Sunday Story, what it's like to cover the war while also living through it.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

I'm Ayesha Roscoe and you're listening to the Sunday Story from Up First, where we go beyond the news to bring you one big story. If you've been listening to NPR's reporting on Gaza over the past year and a half, there's a name you've likely heard. NPR's producer in Gaza, Anas Baba. With Anas Baba in Khan Yunus, Gaza. That was NPR producer Anas Baba. Anas Baba.

Anas is one of the only Palestinian journalists in Gaza working full-time for an American news organization. He's from Gaza City, and he's been NPR's eyes and ears on the ground. He sends dispatches from hospitals, displacement camps, and bomb sites. Dust everywhere, the boulder of the guns and explosions all over the air. Wherever you put your eye to the horizon, it's the same. Destruction everywhere. Anas does all of this with little more than a cell phone.

He works closely with a team of NPR journalists who've been covering this war from outside of Gaza. Israel has banned international journalists from independent access to Gaza since Hamas's deadly attack on October 7th, 2023. On January 19th of this year, a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas went into effect. The ceasefire permitted Palestinians to return to the north of Gaza. And today we are returning. Hundreds of thousands of people. Literally hundreds of thousands of people.

Anas Baba was one of them. Nothing is still the same. We're going to keep reporting here. Justine Yan is a producer for the Sunday Story. She's been keeping in touch with Anas since he returned to Gaza City in late January to try and understand what it's like to be a reporter covering the war while also living through it. Justine takes up the story after the break. Stay with us. Support for NPR and the following message come from Bolin Branch.

Change your sleep with the softness of Bolin Branch's 100% organic cotton sheets. Feel the difference with 15% off your first set of sheets at bolinbranch.com with code NPR. Exclusions apply. See site for details. I started calling Anas Baba after the ceasefire went into effect,

and he was home in Gaza City. The only place he could find with a good internet connection was a cemetery next to a hospital that had generators. So that's where he'd sit to talk with me about what he'd been through during this war and how home had been an idea that sustained him for 15 months.

I was always fantasizing how it was going to be the first moment that I'm going to see my old neighborhood. He said he wasn't sure what he'd find. But as he walked down the street, reality sunk in. The mosque of my neighborhood, it was totally flat into the ground. He walked past a community kitchen. And was totally flat into the ground. He walked past a community kitchen. And it was flat into the ground. And another building that had housed 20 families.

It was flat into the ground. I kept walking and trying to tell myself that my house is okay. I do believe that my house is going to be okay. And in a way, it was. Unlike so many other houses, his was still standing. Anas's house is at the end of a small street. It's four stories high with concrete verandas on the top three floors. He said his father designed it to look like an Italian villa. Anas lived here with his mother and father, his sister, and two of his younger brothers.

They all evacuated Gaza early in the war, and he hasn't seen them in almost a year. So when he walked up to the front door of his house, he was alone. He reached for the keys in his pocket, but there was nothing left to unlock. The doors were exploded. I found shutters of the locks itself. So the dream of unlocking my door was taken, so I just kept the keys inside my pocket and I entered the house. Once I entered, I started to feel the beating of my heart going crazy. All of the windows had been shattered by bombs. There were gaping holes in the walls. And

on the third floor, he found an unexploded artillery shell. Anna surveyed the damage, the broken glass and piles of rubble. The kitchen was totally empty. No cooking gas, no blades, and no mugs, no spoons, nothing. My house was super sad. There was no people here in order to spread life. I tried my best to stay strong, but having that rush of emotions was good for me. It really was good for me because I thought that I lost that sensation.

Anas is used to being in reporter mode. I'm on the on, on, on, on, on, go, go, go, go, go, go mood. Yes. I cannot even stop for a second. If I stop, that means that I'm going to find that ghost inside of me. Now the bombs have stopped. I think now is a good time to ask him to sit and think about what it's been like. This is Aya Batraoui, NPR's correspondent in Dubai. She's been working closely with Anas since the start of the war.

I still think he's in a little bit of a fight-or-flight mode, like, because he hasn't really settled in yet. Aya has covered the Middle East for more than 15 years. After Hamas's attack on October 7th, her editors in Washington called her and asked her to fly to Israel to join the NPR team there. Eya got on a plane to Tel Aviv the next morning, and she got her assignment. From day one, I was told, call Gaza. From then on, Eya was on the phone with Anas almost every day. Trying to figure out how we tell the story together and what the story should be. From the first to the beginning, okay? From the beginning, got it?

It was a very intense, very intense time. In the chaos of that first week, Anas and Ea collaborated on several stories. Anas would upload recordings and videos he'd gathered on the ground, and Eya would write the stories for the radio, including this one. This is the sound of Gaza's biggest hospital, Al-Shifa. All of its beds are full, like all of Gaza's hospitals, clinics and medical centers, serving its population of 2 million. Every functioning hospital is at full capacity.

The stream of wounded and dead. So he was there interviewing staff, documenting some of the cases coming in, just getting us information of what it was like on the ground. This was some of the last reporting Eya got from Anas in Gaza City before he had to evacuate. I remember having this call with him and he was like, okay, this is the situation. They're telling us to evacuate to the south, all of Gaza City. It was kind of like panic mode.

Israel rained down paper leaflets across parts of Gaza's north telling residents to leave their homes. Ayo went on the radio again and again, trying to describe what was happening. And Barzei Abitraoui is in Jerusalem. Aya, thanks for being with us. Hi, thanks, Scott. What do you hear from people inside of Gaza?

I've been talking to them all week. It's been sheer terror and trauma. They tell me the sounds of the bombs this time are different. And even Israel has said that this war is different and that the response will be harder and harsher than Hamas has ever seen. I can hear in my voice, like, my voice, like, quivering and going away

because it had been such an intense week already had been like seven days of non-stop reporting and calls and yeah like I can hear in my voice already like a sense of exhaustion. I spoke with our producer in Gaza Anas Baba who also had to leave with his family. He told me scenes of mothers carrying their babies and walking by foot for miles, fathers walking with kids on their back, young children having to walk for miles and miles, all of them trying to head south. Anas documented every step of that journey.

I'm standing at the moment inside of Nasr Medical Complex in Khenyoun city. Sending dispatches to his colleagues in Israel. I'm now standing in the middle of the rubbles of what was before a peaceful neighborhood in Rafah city. But sometimes, Eya didn't hear from Anas for days. Was the phone line down because they run out of fuel to keep their telecoms operating or something was struck? He had to use an e-sim or was there like 3G or 4G available? There were multiple communications blackouts during the war.

There is nothing like being disconnected. It's a feeling that you don't know anything. You are not able to understand what happens around you. Just as Eya depended on Anas's reporting, Anas depended on Eya to help him see the bigger picture. So that meant, sometimes, Anas took big risks, like moving closer to the Israeli border to connect to their cell towers. I just put myself in danger in order just to get some internet near to the borders. I can't stay there much more. Eya and the rest of the team worried about Anas's safety. When there

were bombings in an area Anas was thought to be in, someone would reach out just to ask, are you okay? Is it near you? And Anas would respond as soon as he could. He was alive and would respond as soon as he could. He was alive and he had recordings for them. Most mornings, Anas told me, he woke up at 4 a.m. and began scrolling through updates, what had happened while he was asleep. The problem, it was at least 90 airstrikes every day. So what am I going to cover? Am I going to cover the airstrike on the school, or the airstrike on the mosque, or the airstrike that's on the hospital, or the airstrike that killed 100

persons, or it's going to be the children that they were amputated? One thing he always did was try to name the victims. An Israeli airstrike targeted a house in Rafah, the house that belongs to Shaheen's family, which is an airstrike targeted a civilian house in Rafah city. The house hold the family, which is Abu Qamar family, and they were hosted by a family called Abul Hanood family.

And he shared the grief of survivors. This is the sound of a mother that's mourned her 10 years old child. She already lost a daughter before and now she lost another son. It's too much. I wish that I do have a hundred clone of me that can be everywhere to just document every single thing. But it was impossible. It all felt impossible for Aya Batraoui too. After a few weeks in Israel, she went home to Dubai.

From there, she continued to work with Anas to tell stories from Gaza. And that was a different sort of challenge. I can't remember exactly when I came across it on Instagram, but this is like a collage by this group called Gaza Poets. And it sort of spoke to me so much because it's how I felt. It just says in big black letters in the middle, Gaza is being bombed.

And all these tiny little words around it saying things like, I eat breakfast, Gaza is being bombed, and all these tiny little words around it saying things like, I eat breakfast while Gaza is being bombed. I read a book while Gaza is being bombed. I laugh at a joke while Gaza is being bombed. I go to the gym while Gaza is being bombed. I fall asleep while Gaza is being bombed. Reporting was actually like a really important way to release some of that pressure that was building up. After the break, Hau'ea covered the war from afar, while Annas only got closer and closer.

closer. We're back with a Sunday story. I'm Justine Yan. For Dubai based correspondent Aya Batraoui, as the war dragged on, it got harder to make sense of what was happening. It's war. It's war. But it's also a war that was

happening so quick and so fast and one that had the full backing of the United States. And also there are certain numbers that certainly have defied the history books, like Oxfam reports that more women and children were killed in one year of war in Gaza than in any other war in decades. The Committee to Protect Journalists says more journalists were killed in Gaza than any war on record. Same with health care workers, civil defense rescue workers, like the list goes on and on. I really had to think, how do you tell the story of Gaza?

— Everywhere she looked, there were images of atrocities. Men, women, children, injured and killed. It was live streamed every day on like every platform, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Telegram, WhatsApp. People saw and had access to see everything. Everywhere she went, everything she did, she thought of Gaza. Her own life outside the frame of the war felt unfair. Like, why are my kids able to just bike, stub their toe, cry for an hour and get ice cream?

And like all these other kids are like dying these very slow painful deaths under the rubble. There's such a disconnect. That for me was a moment where I felt like, I don't know if I can keep doing this. I don't have the luxury to tap out. Like, you have to keep going. You have to keep reporting.

This is what you do. You have to keep documenting. It became our only way to cope with a feeling of helplessness. Because every single aspect of this conflict has been under dispute or questioned, starting with death tolls. The number of dead, who died, how they died, why they died, even just the number of aid trucks going in. You'd think that's a pretty straightforward thing to count.

It's not. Aya made phone call after phone call to doctors, rescue crews, and aid workers on the ground, trying to verify the basic facts. And while doing that, she'd also call on us. And a lot of times, it would just be venting frustrations, just like being there for each other as colleagues. Reassuring each other that what they did mattered.

And then there's also just the element of like, how are you, how are you? What did you eat for breakfast? Did you get food today? Did you sleep well? Once I return from any documenting an airstrike, I feel that I'm still doing nothing. The burned blood and flesh after an airstrike. I do wish that no one, truly no one can can smell it in his life. In the south, Anas was displaced again and again.

He lived in his car. That's where he slept at night. I do suffer from insomnia. I'm not going to lie about that. I cannot sleep that much. He was always hungry. Anas has lost almost 70 pounds since the start of the war. And there were days he couldn't eat because of what he saw.

The repetition of bombing, evacuation, and bombing again. It's a cycle and the loop never ends. That just keeps going and going and going, but that takes you more and more and more and more to the same spot, always numb, always anxious, always on your toes. Anas has often been among the first to arrive at the scene of a bombing. Several times, he's tried to save someone's life. After one airstrike in Al-Berej, central Gaza,

Anas found a group of people trying to rescue women and children trapped in a building that had just been bombed. It was a human chain. So he joined it. Someone passed him a young woman. She was semi-conscious and couldn't breathe. He carried her out of the building. And they started to take out most of the sands and even small deprees of sand and cement out of her own throat.

Once I just like make sure that it's opened, I started to give her a CPR and she took the first exhale and inhale and opened her eyes. There's no footage of this moment because Anas had put down his phone. He wasn't reporting anymore. It took more than 15 months for the bombs to stop.

The day the ceasefire went into effect, January 19th, 2025. It was also Anas' birthday. He turned 31. About a week later, Anas set out on the coastal road towards Gaza City. It was a seven-mile walk north. He was surrounded by thousands of other Palestinians also heading home. Eya Batraoui called him. Hiya. him. I feel like I'm flying today.

It was a march and a celebration. People were waving Palestinian flags, singing, chanting, playing drums. Reunions were happening all along the road. People who'd stayed in the north during the war were meeting people who'd been displaced to the south. Ana spoke to a woman who hadn't seen her son in 16 months. He left as a boy, she said, and now I meet him as a man.

I'm feeling that there is like shiver all over my body, electricity that's just like gives me more energy to keep going, to keep walking. I'm grateful I'm feeling that with every step that I'm just like putting here it's me back. As he and the crowds got closer to Gaza City Eya reminded him to take in the moment. Wait I want you I want you to just like you said the sea is on your left, the Mediterranean, the coast? Can you just like take a big breath of like the fresh sea air for me? When Anas finally returned to his house, it was not as he remembered it.

He found the shattered lock, the empty kitchen, the unexploded artillery shell. But there were some signs of his former life, like his garden. I do have a lemon tree, I do have a palm tree, I do have an olive tree. And they got bigger, to be honest. It all gave Anas an almost irrational hope. I started to shout, is anybody here? Is there anyone inside the house? To be honest, I wanted my mother or my sister or maybe my brothers to answer me and to say, yeah, we are here, we're waiting for you.

But no one answered me. And when I entered my own parent room, I felt a little bit brokenhearted that I didn't find my father and my mother just to scream at me to go out. You need to knock first. Did you really think that they would be there? Just thinking after 16 months of war, we didn't have anything in our lives that we can control except our own dreams and our own fantasies. And so, Anas went from room to room, letting the house welcome him home.

I laid on every single person of my family bed for around one minute. Even if it was dusty and super dusty, but it was just like I'm embracing them. Even though it was dusty and super dusty, but it was just like I'm embracing them. Anas's family is now in Europe, seeking asylum. But so far they haven't received it. They're not classified as refugees, so they're in limbo, waiting. I only call them once a month for ten minutes. You only call them once a month?

Yes, because I don't want them to be attached to me because maybe at one day at any moment I'm gonna be killed. Because I told them since the start of this war that I want to stay here and I want to keep doing what am I doing. doing what am I doing. In the first days of being home, Anas started settling back in. He wanted to fix his house. There was a lot to do. That leak on the roof,

those windows without glass, damage to the walls. He went to the market and bought some materials. I started to buy some plastic wraps, and even I was planning to have some bricks in order to build again the most damaged areas of my house. Anas and his neighbors even made plans for rebuilding the neighborhood.

We can live with the dust, we can live with the debris, but we learned by the hard way that's always be fast. We don't have that much time in our lives. Then just a week after Palestinians were allowed to return to Gaza City, President Trump gave a press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. I also strongly believe that the Gaza Strip which has been a symbol of death President Trump gave a press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. I also strongly believe that the Gaza Strip, which has been a symbol of death and destruction for so many decades and so bad for the people anywhere near it, and especially those who live there,

and frankly, who's been really very unlucky, it's been very unlucky, it's been an unlucky place for a long time. Being in its presence just has not been good, and it should not go through a process of rebuilding and occupation by the same people that have really stood there and fought for it and lived there and died there and lived a miserable existence there. There was no reason, Trump said, for Palestinians to stay in Gaza.

— It's right now a demolition site. This is just a demolition site. — And he put forward a plan. — The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it, too. We'll own it. — Annas put his own plan to rebuild his house on pause. I started to feel that Mr. President Donald Trump is just giving me and the other people of Gaza the chance to say goodbye for one last time for our houses before he takes it from us.

It's just like the farewell. It's been cold in Gaza City. Ana sees people, often children, searching the rubble for firewood. I reached to a point four days ago that I burned one of my house doors. Yes, I took it off. My house doors. Yes, I took it off. So yesterday, I took some of the wood.

I started the fire. And I started to think, what am I gonna eat today? Thank God, I grabbed some tomatoes with me, five eggs, a chili pepper, and some olive oil. And I made a shakshuka. Yes, it's an Arabian-Palestinian dish that we truly love. So I made a shakshuka, which was the first time, to be honest, in 15 months to eat it. And I was super, super, super happy with that, with the result. Then he heard a knock on the door.

It was his neighbor. And he told me that I smelled that you made a fire. The neighbor asked if Anas could spare any wood. I told him, yes, I do have it. Do you want it? And he told me, yes, I want it. I give it to him. And he told me that he wants it for his own daughter,

that she got birth two weeks ago and he needs to keep the room as warm as possible. I told him, yes, for sure. And if you need any woods, I'm gonna get it. I can take off another door for you. And so instead of rebuilding, for now, Anas will keep taking the doors down from his house, for himself and for his neighbors.

We truly can live without nothing. But you cannot take the dignity, which is called al-karameh. No one can live without dignity. So the last thing that anyone can take from you is your dignity. Our land is our dignity. The ceasefire remains fragile. The first phase of the deal between Israel and Hamas ended on March 1st, with no agreements as to what comes next. On March 2nd, Israel blocked all goods and humanitarian aid from entering Gaza to pressure

Hamas into a different deal, one that frees more hostages but does not end the war. Anas Baba continues to report for NPR from Gaza City. This episode was reported and produced by Justine Yan, additional production by Adelina Lansianis, editing by Jenny Schmidt, fact checking by Will Chase, and audio engineering by Jimmy Keely. Thanks to Aya Batraoui, Dee Dee Skanky, Daniel Estrin, and Mary Glenn Denning. The Sunday Story team includes Andrew Mambo, Kim Naderfame Petersa,

and our senior supervising producer, Leanna Simstrom. Irene Noguchi is our executive producer. I'm Ayesha Roscoe, Up First is back tomorrow with all the news you need to start your week. Until then, have a great rest of your weekend. NPR informs and connects communities around the country, providing reliable information in times of crisis. Federal funding helps us fulfill our mission to create a more informed public and ensures that public radio remains available to everyone.

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