Story of Abubaker

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My name is Abubaker Abed
I am from Deir Al-Balah Refugee Camp, Gaza
My family is from Beit Daras
Here is My Story

A poetic journey tracing three generations from the Nakba to today’s Gaza.
Told through the voice of a young narrator, Abubaker, it weaves loss, memory, art, and resistance into a story of survival. From a village erased to a rose blooming in rubble, this is not just a story of war.


It’s a story of life.


Of dreams buried and still blooming.


Of a people who refuse to be numbers.

The Story of Abubaker Abed

“Palestinians dream to live. Others live to dream”

Reconstruction Method

The VR experience was reconstructed through oral testimony, archival imagery, spatial memory, historical research, and environmental reconstruction methods.

Oral Testimonies

The narrative structure is primarily based on testimonies from displaced families originating from Beit Daras, including the memories of Abubaker Abed’s family.

Read Sources
The testimonies describe daily life before displacement, the attack on the village, the journey southward, and the early years inside refugee camps.
“They started shelling us from there. The shells fell on the houses. They killed children, cattle, and also men. We didn’t have shelter in which to hide. We hid in the houses, but the bombs fell on the houses. They would go through the wall and fall on the houses, because the houses then were made of mud. [But] we stayed.”

P32 from Ramzy Baroud, My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story (2010)

“The Jews let the people get out, and then they whipped them with bombs and machine guns. More people fell than those who were able to run. My sister and I … started running through the fields; we’d fall and get up. My sister and I escaped together holding each other’s hand. The people who took the main road were either killed or injured, and those who went through the fields. The firing was falling on the people like sand, he bombs from one side and the machine guns from the other. The Jews were on the hill; there was a school and a water reservoir for people and the vegetables. They showered the people with machine guns. A lot of the people died and got injured“

P32 from Ramzy Baroud, My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story (2010)

“The first day we left our home, it was like the Day of Judgment. I held my first son (who now is deceased) while we escaped, but he fell from my hands!” Her infant son was lost during the evacuation for several hours. Fortunately, she found him crying among some cacti and other plants. “I was crying when I lost him…I was crying when I found him,” she recalled we are not numbers Grandpa Mohammed mounted his faithful donkey with a few of the family’s belongings and his young daughter Mariam. Ibrahim was in his mother’s arms. Ahmad walked alongside his father, and my father, Mohammed, barefoot and confused, trotted behind. It was another trail of tears of sorts.“

P32 from Ramzy Baroud, My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story (2010)

““When my father was born, his grandfather went to the marketplace to fetch him a doctor. An Israeli airplane appeared from nowhere and bombed the market, killing 150 people, just like that. My great-grandfather was among them. You will search the records in vain for mention of this. Only a few Palestinians in Deir al-Balah still remember. Many such massacres have been erased from history.”

Chapter6 Ahmed Alnaouq, “Just Like That: Life and Death in Gaza/from Deluge Jamie Stern-Weiner (2024)

Spatial Reconstruction

Village structures and environmental spaces were reconstructed through archival photographs, historical maps, regional architectural references, and oral spatial descriptions.

View Reconstructions
Reconstruction of Beit Daras based on archival record and photos
The location of the evacuation Path where Beit Daras Massacre happened based on testimonies of survivors
3D Reconstruction of the evacuation Path where Beit Daras Massacre happened based on testimonies of survivors and archival record
Reconstruction of Aid Distribution Massacre in 1949, Deir Al-BAlah
3D Reconstruction of Deir Al-Balah Refugee Camp in 1960s
Reconstructed Alley in Deir Al-Balah Refugee Camp in 2000s
Reconstructing the scene to the left showing boys killed by Israel on the Gaza beach fleeing for their lives.
3D Reconstruction of the art work of Wisam, father of Abubaker
3D Reconstruction of a mass grave in Gaza Strip
Using Generative AI to Reconstruct Palestinian figures and assets
Sound Reconstruction

Sound was used not only to recreate physical environments, but also to reconstruct emotional transitions across generations. Layered ambient sound combined wind, birds, distant shelling, sea ambience, and shifting spatial textures to reflect movement between ordinary life, displacement, memory, and uncertainty.

Read Method

The Taraweeda are songs that have carried joy, longing, and defiance across generations — and were even used as a coded language of resistance during the Palestinian struggle.

Traditional Zaghrouta celebrations were used during moments connected to collective joy, weddings, and public gathering. Within the VR experience, Zaghrouta appears as fragmented echoes of celebration of new birth.

The sound of the drone “Zanana” was layered into the atmosphere as a persistent sonic presence over Gaza. Unlike sudden explosions, the drone operates through duration and anticipation, remaining constantly audible above daily life. Its inclusion reflects how occupation can become embedded within ordinary sound environments.

Fragments from Yasser Arafat’s speech during the Oslo Accord celebrations at the White House were incorporated into the soundscape as historical markers of political hope and expectation. The speech appears briefly within the VR environment, contrasting later sound layers shaped by surveillance, war,and displacement.

Uncertainty and Absence

Some locations, objects, and environmental details could not be reconstructed precisely due to erased archives, fragmented documentation, and interrupted historical continuity.

Read Note
Certain spaces within the VR experience remain intentionally incomplete. These absences reflect the condition of memory itself, where parts of history survive only through fragmented testimony.

Timeline

1948
Expulsion from Beit Darras
Read Memory
It was early spring in 1948, in the village of Beit Daras, not far from the town of Al-Majdal. My grandfather, Mahmood, owned a small shop. He lived with my grandmother, Fatmeh, who was pregnant, and their two sons—Ahmad and Mohammad. Life was unfolding as usual. The fields were green. The sky full of birds—sparrows, storks—flying home.
The road to Beit Daras surrounded by cactus hedges Before 1948

But that day, the birdsong stopped. The air went still. A sudden roar shook the earth—louder than thunder. Mortars fired from the north, from Kibbutz Tabiyya. Fire rained down on the village. Nine neighbours were killed. The orchards that fed families were set ablaze. From that day on, all they remembered were the screams and the smell of their village, burning.

Beit Daras at the day it fell in mid-May 1948
1949
Red Thursday — The Massacre
Read Memory
It was a cold day in January 
When my grandmother gave birth to Aishah.
For a moment, there was joy. By then, my grandfather had a small shop
near the Deir al-Balah market. A few days later, the sky roared.
Israeli planes flew low toward the aid center by the market.
Hundreds of refugee stood in line, waiting for food. Without warning, bombs fell.
They destroyed everything
The line became a mass of bodies. Some say 100 were killed.
Others say 250.
No one could count the pieces. One family had just welcomed a newborn that morning.
The father ran to find a doctor.
He never came back.
The aid center in Deir Al-Balah town
1964
Life in the Camp
Read Memory
My grandfather spent the rest of his life in the refugee camp,still waiting to return. He refused to buy land. As the family grew Camp Tents turned to bricks. Bricks turned to cement. But the pain stayed the same. My grandfather had two more children Hamda, and my father, Wisam. Wisam was born in 1964, in a time of trauma, dislocation and the planting of resistance. He was just three the Israeli army occupied Gaza By 1970, illegal settlements rose near the camp. More land was stolen. To protect that theft, they built fences, watchtowers, and checkpoints.
The tents used by refugees in Gaza district in 1948
Deir Al-Balah Refugee Camp in 1960s
1967
Occupation of Gaza
Read Memory
my father, was just three when the Israeli army occupied Gaza
 in 1967. By 1970, illegal settlements rose near the camp.
More land was stolen.
 To protect that theft,
they built fences, watchtowers, and checkpoints.
Israeli soldiers interrogating Palestinians during the 1967 war and the occupation of Gaza
1987
First Intifada
Read Memory
In 1987, First Intifada began. It started when an Israeli truck ran over Palestinian refugees. People rose up. Boys threw stones in protest. Israel answered by breaking their bones. Oppression only grew. Life became curfews, raids, and arrests. Gaza began to look like a ghetto
Protests in the street during the First Intifada hedges Before 1948

Blocking Roads during the First Intifada
1994
Oslo Period
Read Memory
My grandfather passed away in 1992, carrying with him over 44 years of hope to return to Beit Daras. Then came peace or the promise of it. The promise of a state
Signing of the Oslo I Accord on September 13, 1993
2000
Second Intifada
Read Memory
But it came wrapped in a 40-kilometer fence 
and two decades of siege, more violence, and more pain.
2002
My Birth
Read Memory
I was born in 2002, the year Israel killed 192 Palestinian children. My father gave me a special name: Abu Baker. One day I asked him, “Why that name?” He said,”Because you will carry our message and our hopes across the world.” Like him, I grew up in the camp but by then it was more crowded than ever. The siege had tightened. So many things were not allowed in. There was no land left to build on, I spent my days running through the alleys, chasing dreams all the way to the beach. Soon a never-ending buzzing sound fills our sky the sound of drones,disrupting what was left of our sleep,what’s left of our lives.
2014
Child Memory
Read Memory
I was too young when I learned that the machine of death chases children— not just those sleeping in their mothers’ arms, not just those sheltering in schools, not just those picking strawberries in the fields,but even those kicking a ball by the sea. Israeli naval forces fired three missiles at a group of boys playing soccer. Four of them were killed. They were my age. I imagined them running, laughing— until joy turned to screams, and silence took over.
2023
Gaza Genocide
Read Memory
Throughout my life, Israeli offensives kept coming each with a biblical name, each leaving deeper wounds. Then came October 7, a rupture in decades of silence after generations caged by siege and dispossession. In the face of an injustice older than me, older than my parents— From that day, Israel stripped us of our humanity. While the world watched the genocide unfold, the horrors only grew. hunger and thirst laid siege to our bodies, bombs to our homes,darkness to our future. They took from me Al-Hasan Matar my best friend. So many lives stolen,too many to count. But we counted We counted the children killed, the dreams buried,last breaths beneath collapsed homes and schools,missing limbs, books burned to ashes,shattered tents, the weight of rubble. We counted until there was nothing left to count. In the dark, we pass down the names each one a flame against forgetting. We are not numbers.

People and Places

↑ Return to Beginning

Abubaker Abed

Abubaker Abed is a Palestinian Journalist, and a third-generation descendant of the demolished village of Beit Darras, Abubaker’s perspective is rooted in his grandfather’s expulsion during the 1948 Nakba. Though he set out to be a sports commentator, the onset of the current genocidal campaign in Gaza transformed him into an “accidental war correspondent.” Reporting from Deir Al-Balah, Abubaker turns a critical lens on the conflict, ensuring that the international community sees not just the destruction of the present, but the enduring spirit of a people who have survived seventy-eight years of displacement.

↑ Return to Beginning

Beit Daras

Beit Daras was once a thriving Palestinian village 46 kilometers northeast of Gaza, where 3,190 residents lived. Life was defined by the rhythm of the harvest and the call to prayer from its two central mosques and schools.

However, the peace shattered on March 27, 1948, when heavy shelling devastated the crops and claimed the first nine lives. By May 11, the village became a primary target of the Jewish militia to trigger an exodus. Despite a fierce defense by locals, the village fell. Fifty casualties were recorded in the attack, and as families fled toward Gaza, accounts describe a harrowing massacre of those trying to escape.By 1950, the mosques and schools were demolished, replaced by the moshavim Givati, Azrikam, and Emunim. Today, only wild cactus and eucalyptus trees mark the site of a Beit Daras.The surrounding fields are cultivated by Israeli settlements

Aerial View of Beit Daras in May 1948
Beit Daras at the Day it fell

↑ Return to Beginning

Deir Al-Balah

Deir El-Balah refugee camp is the smallest refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. It is located on the Mediterranean coast, west of a town of the same name, in central Gaza. Deir al-Balah means ‘Monastery of the Dates’, a reference to the abundant date palm groves in the area. 

Deir El-Balah camp initially provided shelter to Palestine Refugees who had fled from villages in central and southern Palestine, as a result of the 1948 War. The refugees originally lived in tents, which were replaced by mud-brick shelters and, later on, by cement block structures. Now 28,227 Palestine Refugees are registered with UNRWA in the camp.

Deir Albalah Refugee Camp in 2017.@UN Photo

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