Naim Aburaddi was homesick.
It was 2022, and it had been about seven years since he last saw Gaza. As a graduate student in media studies, cut off by a long siege on the enclave, home had become but a memory.
So as an intrepid observer of new media technologies, he discovered another way to get in.
Aburaddi, together with Ahlam Muhtaseb, a professor of media studies at California State University in San Bernardino, and the team of researchers at the X-Real Lab, sent a 360-degree camera, where a local journalist friend, Ahmad Hasaballah, took it to all the places he longed to see: the souks, the busy streets and squares of Gaza City, the 1000-year-old Turkish hamam, and the sea.
It took six months for the camera to reach Gaza. But once it did, the 360-degree experience became a kind of portal allowing him to bypass Israel’s grip on Gaza’s borders and return to his homeland, if only virtually.
