“Scientist, writer, artist, and mother.”

That was my answer to a question the social worker asked us in the third grade, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

She was surprised by my last answer, asking, “Why a mother?” I said, “Because I will give my children the things the universe took from them.”

Seeds require fertile soil to grow, and in the same way, children need a nurturing environment to thrive. That’s what I learned from being the eldest daughter in my family. I became like a mother to my siblings. It never bothered me, because I enjoyed sharing tenderness and love with those around me. Just as one tends to seeds with essential nutrients, I was trying to provide my siblings with the supportive atmosphere to blossom and flourish. But since the environment in Gaza City is like parched sand, most children are not able to blossom.

Children are the most vulnerable beings on the planet. Like a seedling needs water and fertile soil to thrive, children need love, care, and affection. But does the world provide every child with their emotional needs?

I thought the answer was yes, until I saw with my own eyes how children live in my country. It started in April 2023, when my friend and I decided to volunteer at Al Shatii Refugee Camp for a book distribution campaign. It was my first time entering the refugee camp, and the alleys were full of people with tales of sorrow.

Life in the camp was difficult. The houses were very primitive. They were tiny, had no proper bathrooms and just tin roofs, and were all squished together. Schools were rare, and too many children didn’t attend them because the school buildings were far from where they lived or they had to work or (for girls) they were married off young.

Even the basics seemed non-existent in the camp — until I found a group of children playing football in an empty courtyard outside a building The ground was not suitable for playing, nor was the weather. None of the children were wearing shoes, but despite that, they were playing with great skill and accuracy.

Then the building’s security employee surprised them and asked all the children to leave.

I heard a kindergarten-aged child crying, and it burned my heart. Why did no one hear his sobs? Why did no one provide a playground for him to play in with his friends or a school where he could learn?

I wanted to take years of my life and give them to this child, but I was helpless to do it. I thought what was happening to children in Gaza was the worst thing possible.

Then the genocidal war came in October of 2023 and my perspective changed forever. During the genocide, children’s lives started shifting between displacement, hunger, loss, and death. A child is supposed to be at school among his friends, eating a delicious meal at recess, and returning to his mother after school to say, “Look, mama, I got full marks.” Now you see the same child wandering barefoot in the streets in worn-out clothes, running here and there to search for what he can find to feed his family. Life forces him to be the man of the family while he is only six years old.

Children are being robbed of everything

A child loses something every minute in Gaza. Some of them lose their lives. Some children lose their source of tenderness and love when one or both parents are killed.

Omar, my youngest brother, who is dearest to my heart above all else, is ten years old. He is an ambitious child who loves science, is loved by everyone, takes care of those around him, and has weak hearing. With the increasing roar of warfare — whether from warplanes, drones, quadcopters, or tanks — and the continuous destruction of homes and unprecedented increase in explosions, Omar’s hearing became even worse. The doctors who examined him found significant additional hearing loss.

When I heard the news, I didn’t know how I should feel. Should I simply feel sad? Should I feel despair, because the future of my little brother and the future of all the children of Gaza is completely destroyed? Or maybe just angry, because they have not seen life yet and cannot know what life will mean one day?

In fact, I felt all of these emotions, because the occupation had robbed the children of everything. It had not even left them with what God had given them naturally.

Motherhood has become a curse

During this hard time, I have been volunteering in schools and institutions, and my work with children is both good and painful at the same time. I never know how to answer a child who asks me, “Where is my mother?” And what is more difficult than that is how to respond to a child who asks, “Where is my country that you are talking about?”

Confusion fills my mind, and avoiding answering these constant questions is not helping. I wish one day I could erase all the bad memories from the minds of the children, to give them a better life than the life the occupation took from them, but unfortunately all of these are dreams, all of these are just dreams.

One day, when I returned from work late, I passed through a side street and stopped next to the juice seller. While he was making juice for me, my eyes witnessed a very beautiful little boy, with beautiful eyes and a small face, next to a tent, taking off his clothes, and defecating — on the corner while the whole street was looking at him.

That day, I cursed myself, and I cursed the world I live in. If providing safety for the children here is an extremely difficult thing and the world can’t do it, then is at least providing a simple bathroom for this child so difficult?

Questions like this remain stuck in my mind: Where are my country’s institutions for child protection and rights? What is the role of the scientists who seek to find the meaning of humanity and safety for all? Or is it just because our children are from Gaza that they don’t deserve their most basic rights, nor even deserve to live?

My desire to be a mother one day is now mixed with fear and anxiety. What if my son says, “Mama, I want bread. I’m hungry,” and I cannot provide anything because there is a famine in Gaza? Or what if I become a mother one day and I watch my son cry every night for his father, who fell victim to the occupation and went missing, with an unknown fate? I would not be able to provide the fertile ground he needs to thrive.

I recently learned that motherhood itself contains many compromises, but to be a mother in Gaza means sacrificing your life. As a Gazan mother, you wish you could place your child in your arms and say to death when it approaches, “Leave him, he is my son and I am not letting you take him away.” But you cannot. Simply because the occupation has spread the smell of death everywhere until the children have been robbed of their childhoods.