DANIEL ESTRIN, HOST:
If you've been following NPR's reporting on Gaza this year, there's a name you hear all the time - Anas Baba. He's NPR's producer in Gaza and one of the only Palestinian journalists working full time there for an American news organization. Israel bars international journalists like me from independent access to Gaza. But Anas Baba lives there. And for the last 14 months, he's been NPR's microphone in Gaza, covering one of the most devastating wars of this century. It's one that's killed more journalists over the course of a single year than any other conflict in the last several decades, as documented by the Committee to Protect Journalists. Anas Baba is here with us now from Gaza to reflect on what he's seen this past year and what it's been like covering this war.
First of all, how are you?
ANAS BABA, BYLINE: I truly ran out of those answers - that I'm fine, I'm doing OK, everything is going fine. To be honest, I'm not feeling that I'm still the same Anas that was before the 7 October. But we can say that I'm still at least functioning.
ESTRIN: Well, you're not just functioning. You are doing remarkable work every day. And I thought we could talk about some of the moments that are the most memorable for you from your year of reporting.
BABA: It's my pleasure.
ESTRIN: Well, one year ago last December, I remember you were trying to make your way to Khan Younis, Gaza's second-largest city that was, at that time, under a major Israeli offensive, and you hitched a ride with a very unusual car.
BABA: Yes. My car broke down, and I couldn't find any fuel because there was no fuel. So there was the old Mercedes, a Mercedes '89, V12 engine that we can run it on cooking oil.
ESTRIN: On cooking oil?
BABA: Yes. And cooking oil, at that time, believe it or not - it was 10 times pricier than the fuel itself. It costed me, for one liter, $20. So I went to the city for one aim, which is Nasser Medical Complex, because it was the hospital that's holding around 1,000 patients inside.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
BABA: I'm sitting at the moment inside Nasser Hospital. Hundreds of families - mostly, there are women sheltering over each corner like a metro station in one of the busiest countries in the world.
Before the military operation or the incurgent (ph) to Khan Younis, they asked the people to evacuate from the western site to the eastern site. They couldn't have a place because already all of the people from the north Gaza and Gaza City evacuated to Khan Younis. They couldn't find a place to shelter instead of the Nasser Complex. To be honest, it's huge, but it was not enough.
ESTRIN: Let me ask you, Anas - you are a journalist experiencing what you're reporting on. You and your family have been displaced again and again now how many times in the war?
BABA: I got displaced seven times, Daniel.
ESTRIN: Seven times - can you talk a little bit about just the logistics of being displaced and also working as a reporter?
BABA: The displacement logistics - I wish not that you live this experience. But here is my own advices for you. Always have all of your luggage packed and ready. The building that I'm living now in - it's three floors. That's holding in the meantime 200 and around 10 people in it. From my cousins - having 210 person is truly crazy. You need someone to organize the traffic on the stairs because there's 50 child that's rushing around and another 10 women that's going with the bread that freshly baked. Every single person is doing something because you cannot stand a minute without doing anything. Why you need to raise time for your own resources - otherwise, you're going to be dead.
ESTRIN: And yet, every day, you get up and report. Is there someone you've reported on this year whose story still sticks with you when you think back?
BABA: So, Daniel, we are unique. We report on both. We report on life and death. I still remember the day when I was in Rafah, and Rafah was holding around a million displaced inside of it, and there was no food, nothing available in the markets. And I was walking between all of those crowds, and then suddenly, something stopped me. My nose snatched something very, very rare to be smelling, which is a cake. I followed that scent, and I found that there is a baker.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
BABA: Mr. Ibrahim is garnishing the cake with all of the cream. It's the peanut butter cream with coconut and some sprinkles. When he wants just, like, to assemble the cake, he transfer it like he's dealing with a little infant, with much care.
He started baking cakes because there was a father that came to him, and he told him that, my son lost his legs during this war, and he's still hospitalized. And today marks his own birthday, and they want to make anything for him that - maybe draw a smile on this little child.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
BABA: Seeing it after 140 days of war, someone in Gaza who just, like, wants to share all of the love and happiness by making some cakes, is making me, myself, happy.
So Daniel, at the meantime, the food situation is totally critical here in the South. We cannot find anything in the market. There is no fresh food. The Israelis are not allowing that much of aid to enter because they accused Hamas that they are taking it. Now we are living on three main things, which is bread, rice and some lentils. That's it.
ESTRIN: Anas, it's almost New Year's. What story are you hoping to report in this new year?
BABA: Between me and you is only a 1 1/2 hour of drive, but you are in Israel, and I am in Gaza. We live in totally different worlds. If I want, I would love to report something in this new year, I would love to report how is every single Gazan dreaming and hoping, which is welcoming a ceasefire, ending for all of this bloodshed.
ESTRIN: Anas, I can't wait to hear your reporting about a ceasefire.
BABA: Inshallah.
ESTRIN: And I hope it comes very soon.
BABA: Inshallah.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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