What once was Shujayiya

'Can you imagine,' asks Sami, gesticulating towards a pile of rubble with a wheelchair dangling on a string from one of the smashed floors, 'how you would move over 200 hundred patients from a hospital after a strike warning giving you only a couple of hours to escape?' Sami doesn't know how the workers in the Al Wafa hospital managed to save as many lives as they did before the building was bombed. Particularly as the hospital was for rehabilitation and many of the patients were unable to walk.

The mukhtar and his driver give us a tour of his district, almost every street pulverised into a rubble. The only straight lines in the mess are the roads which divide the mounds of cement and twisted wires, which only 6 months ago were functioning streets.

But through the stench of sewage from all the broken pipes, and the dust whipped up by the wind, where there is a straight line, or a clear patch, there are children and signs of life. The ubiquitous line of coloured washing hangs to dry in the dusty air. Little school girls in pristine white frilled socks and hair bobbles to match, pick their way to school through the mud. Within a mound of rubble, a room remains, and through the chink I see a barber in his makeshift salon under a dim light bulb, carefully shaving a customer. A boy takes his little brother's hand as they cross from one former street side  to the other. A donkey pulls a cart loaded with shiny red apples and perfect yellow bunches of bananas, casting a colourful contrast against the dusty destruction. Human survival against all odds. And the donkey looks well cared for.

In another street a bulldozer is scraping rubble into piles. Groups of young men work alongside with their hands. They wave and smile as I bring out my camera.

The mukhtar takes us to where he once lived. From the site of his house - now riddled with bullet holes and windows blown out, we see a fertile stretch of land, undeveloped, and in the distance, the border with Israel, from where the shells had hurtled for those 51 days of hell. We're standing on the front line. Looking behind us we inspect the remains of his district - a mosque - its minaret a metal framed skeleton against the sky; apartment blocks previously 6 or 7 storeys, now the height of a bungalow; an empty space, once a communal yard, now a giant mud puddle reflecting the ruins around.

 'My neighbours are all still under that rubble,' says the mukhtar, pointing to a ruined building and shaking his head. 'They were all at home when it was hit. Their children all killed.'  Looking at the big puddle in the middle, with tiny shoots of grass peeping above it, I imagine the children playing in this space. Their quarrels and their laughter. Now they're lying silent under the ruins of their house.

We drive out of the destruction zone past a field of tomato plants standing proud, already bearing fruit despite the short period since the war, and back to the clinic along the roads emblazoned with signs advertising Hamas - soldiers in camouflage, smiling proudly with their weapons, boasting strength, might and protection.

We interview four people who've lost one or both eyes during the attacks.

It's already time to leave though I feel like I've only just begun. As we say goodbye to Sami and promise to do everything we can to get him a 2 day break from Gaza, and some apple tobacco, I feel dizzied by my own freedom. The sand on the feet of my tripod is the only outward sign of where I've been lucky enough to visit, and lucky enough to leave.

The world will never look quite the same again.

After this summer's war, the director of the Israeli Army's mental health department commented: 'I don't want to call it a phenomenon, but 3 Israeli soldiers committing suicide after operation protective edge, is a significant event.'