Gaza Shattered Dreams and Silent Tears
Our family, once full of love and life, was made up of seven souls—my father, my mother, myself as the eldest at 20 years old, my sisters Hala, who was 18, Huda, 16, Lynn, 12, and little Farah, just 2 years old. Each of us carried our own stories, our dreams still fresh and full of hope.
Just before the war, our lives had finally begun to settle. My father had managed to purchase a modest apartment for us. We adored that place. We dreamed of filling it with laughter, joy, and celebrations. Yet, we hadn’t even finished paying for it before it was all torn away.
In the first year at our new home, 2022, I graduated high school with a score of 98.4. By God’s grace, I was admitted to medical school—a dream I’d nurtured since childhood. My parents were my biggest supporters, far prouder and more ambitious for my future than even I was. Only days later, our joy doubled with the birth of our youngest sister, Farah, the light of our home.
Then came 2023. Hala, despite the constant turmoil and bombings of Gaza, graduated high school with a score of 92.4. It had been a struggle, but she triumphed, choosing to study psychology, vowing to excel despite the hardships. Our home was alive with pride, our family brimming with happiness. We celebrated the simplest of joys—gathering with loved ones, sharing stories, and making memories. Our last gathering, on October 6th, was filled with laughter. My father brought us knafeh, and we savored every moment together. We didn’t know it would be our last moments of happiness.
The next day, on October 7th, the bombardment on Gaza began. Fear became our new reality. The constant sound of explosions and destruction haunted us. On the second day of the war, after threats of evacuation in the dead of night, we fled our home and sought refuge at my grandfather’s house—my father’s father.
Three days later, on October 11th, as the call to Maghrib prayer echoed through the sky, we received the devastating news—my uncle, the nurse, had been martyred. Just two weeks before, he had taken us to the beach, where we had found joy for the first time in a long while. We had no idea that it would be our final day with him. The next day, we buried him. We visited my mother’s parents to offer our condolences, then returned to my paternal grandfather’s house, hearts heavy with grief.
October 13th, my birthday, arrived with no celebration. I was waiting for some small miracle, a piece of good news to soothe the ache in my heart. But instead, as dawn broke, my beloved maternal grandfather followed his son into martyrdom. He had passed during the Fajr call, leaving us utterly shattered. We had no idea that our final moment with him would be when we comforted him after my uncle’s passing. His absence left a gaping wound in our hearts.
That same day, as the noon call to prayer filled the air, the threats of evacuation came again—this time targeting my paternal grandfather’s home. We gathered our few remaining possessions, bundled our grief and pain, and fled once more. We left behind everything we had known and sought refuge in a school in the central region of Gaza. The days that followed were some of the hardest we had ever known. I spent a week there—one of the worst of my life. After a brief return to northern Gaza to support my mother’s family in their grief, we ended up at Al-Shifa Hospital alongside thousands of other displaced souls.
We sat huddled in a narrow corridor, no more than two square meters, my mother and my sisters by my side. It was on that very day we arrived that we received more tragic news—my cousin had been martyred. We rushed to the morgue to say our goodbyes, only to be met with a second devastating blow. Lying beside my cousin was the body of my paternal grandfather. He had been martyred after returning to our family home to gather supplies.
The days that followed were a blur of hunger and suffering. We had no bread to eat, no clean water to drink. Our hunger was numbed by canned fava beans that we were lucky enough to find in a nearby shop. This life continued for nearly a month, a month where every moment felt like an eternity.
Then came the order to evacuate Al-Shifa. We were forced to flee again, this time heading south. We traveled with my maternal grandmother, uncles, and their families. In this chaos, we became separated from my father. He stayed behind with his mother, as she was bedridden and he couldn’t leave her side. We stayed in contact only by phone, each conversation filled with fear and uncertainty.
Our journey south was grueling—five hours on foot, with the sun scorching our skin and exhaustion wearing us down. The road was lined with snipers, their weapons trained on us. Soldiers mocked our suffering, their laughter mixing with the cries of terrified children and the groans of the elderly. We trudged on, carrying nothing but our despair and a few belongings.
For two months, we lived in a half-finished building in Rafah, enduring the bitter cold of winter. The prices of everything soared, and basic necessities became rare luxuries. On December 19th, after days of being cut off from the world, we received more heartbreaking news—my beloved grandmother, my father’s mother, had been martyred four days earlier. We hadn’t even known. Since then, we lost all contact with my father. He vanished into the unknown, leaving us to wonder if he was alive or gone, another soul claimed by the relentless violence.
With no means to survive, we left our temporary shelter and moved to a camp, living in tents through the harshest of winters. Our little Farah suffered the most, her tiny body shivering in the cold. We had only two sets of clothes each—there was nothing to shield her from the biting winds. She grew sick, her little body weak from malnutrition and the lack of warmth. The worst part was her loneliness—she barely knew our father, having only seen him in photos on our phones. She had no memories of him before the war, her short life marked by loss and emptiness.
Months passed in those wretched tents, and then one day, my mother came to us with news that broke what was left of our hearts. She had found a cancerous tumor in her body. This disease had already scarred her once, but she had survived. Now, because of the phosphorus bombs, the constant malnutrition, and the poisonous air, the cancer had returned, tearing through her body once more.
We are lost in this endless nightmare, our family shattered by loss, our dreams trampled by war. All we can do is hold on to the memories of the love we once shared, and pray that somehow, some way, we find our way back to each other again.