Chana Joffe-Walt

Is he okay, Banyas? Yes, now he's all right. We talked for a while and then said goodbye. That was the end of April. And then, in July, I saw Maram's name on my phone. Hi, Maram. Can you hear me? Hello? Yeah. It was Banyas. She wanted to talk, tell me about her day. Then, another day... Hello. Hi, Banyas. Do you want to talk to them? Yeah, sure. What are you doing?

Through the summer into the fall, Banyas called me, and I called her. Maram, her mother, gave permission for these phone calls, but it was always just Banyas on the line, telling me about herself and her life. I wanted to know what it's like to be a kid in this war. And here was this kid who wanted to talk. Banias was a natural narrator of her own life. She was constantly directing my attention.

These are my friends. This is my school stationery, as you can see. Do you want to know what we're doing right now? I'll tell you. Unfortunately for me, she also had zero interest in satisfying my journalistic agenda. If I asked Beignet a question she was not interested in, she'd yawn. Dramatically. Stage yawn. It's getting late. I'm so tired. Let's look over here.

I had been reading and thinking about what was happening in Gaza all the time, talking to people there. Every call with Banias was something I hadn't heard, that was completely different from when adults tell the story. So that is today's episode. We're calling it The Narrator. We're going to listen to this kid in Gaza, a narrator who does not ask permission to narrate.

She takes the phone with a soaring confidence that what she has to tell you is interesting and important. And I agree with her. Stay with us.

It's This American Life. My calls with Banyas were sporadic. Sometimes we talked once a week. Sometimes a month would go by. Usually we talked at the end of the day, her time, while she was sitting on a mattress inside the house, fidgeting. There were always lots of people and activity in the background, but Banyas never explained much about who was there or what they were doing.

She told me about what she was doing, what she wanted me to know, and sometimes see.

She's in a pink shirt that says dream, huge eyes, dark hair and pigtails with two loose curls, very purposefully framing her face. And you have earrings. I didn't know you had earrings.

Purple furry with rhinestones.

When Benyus and I first started talking on the phone, my questions were pretty basic. What do you do all day? She was in a house with 80 people, which is unusual in Gaza right now to live in a house. Most people are in tents or schools or other temporary shelters. Banias and her mom, dad, and baby brother were on the ground floor of this house, sharing that floor with about 20 relatives.

There was one bedroom. She slept on a mattress on the floor alongside her parents, brother, grandpa, uncle, and aunt. Everyone else slept in the living area. If Banyas wanted any time in the tiny bathroom, she got up early in the morning, then she ate breakfast, and then what?

What classes were you taking? A math class. Okay. And did you write actual math, or is it just pretend?

At this point, July, Banias had not been in actual class in an actual school building for nine months. But she played school every day with three other girls, two younger and one older. There were other kids in the building, but everyone else was just OK or a boy or a baby.

When aid organizations go into other war zones, one of the first things they do for kids is set up schools because children need a sense of routine and a sense that life is moving forward toward a future. There's no safe place in Gaza to set up schools like that. So Banias and her friends in the building created that for themselves. They played school for hours. There were lectures.

There were assignments. There were exams. Who is usually in charge of what you're going to do that day?

Donna is generous with her iPad. So this is another part of Banias' day. Games on the iPad. When the war started, her mother's screen time rules went out the window. But also, Israel cut off electricity to Gaza. There's just generators and solar panels. So screen time is limited anyway.

Banyas was reenacting her old life, where she had teachers and exams and went out to cafes. There was one they used to go to every Saturday.

Okay. Did they make salad and pancakes?

Mm-hmm. What did you eat in real life today?

Some white beans. Do you ever get to eat pancakes or noodles or burgers?