A birthday wish stating, “Each war, may you be well” (a play on the Arabic birthday greeting, “Each year, may you be well”). Photo: Mohammad Weam Al Ta’ban

Today is my birthday.
I have just turned nineteen. And today also marks my 600th day under war.  A birthday? Maybe… but no candles, no cake, no surprises, no family gathering telling stories about the day I was born. Just a cloudy sky filled with drones that never leave, explosions that never cease, and a heart whispering softly: “Has anyone survived to tell me: Happy birthday?”

I remember last year — also during war — when my friend
surprised me with a gift:
A wrapped box that turned out to be a used aid carton.
I unwrapped it and found canned beans, peas and chickpeas inside.
He had gifted me what was available in the market.
I still remember how surprised I was that day.
In Gaza, gifts aren’t measured by their price, but by how much life managed
to survive to bring them to you.

Before the war, I was a student in my final year of school.
I studied, laughed with my siblings and friends,
dreamed of university, of the new world I was about to enter.
I planned for very small things: a new backpack, a new city, a fresh start.

At 19, I was supposed to be in university,
sharing future plans with my friends, planning my first trip,
buying my mother a small gift from my very first pay check.
But in Gaza, everything is postponed.
Life is postponed, joy is postponed, even dreams are postponed
until further notice.

What isn’t postponed is war.
Every morning, it wakes us before we’re ready.
Every evening, it takes someone we love, something we own, or
a corner we used to feel safe in.

At midnight, the start of my birthday, I received a message
from someone dear to me.
But something felt off.
The sound of the buzzing drone filled the sky — loud, frightening —
as if it came only to ruin that brief moment and steal away the peace
we try to find in special times.

I couldn’t feel happy the way I should.
It didn’t feel like a celebration.
All night, I kept wondering:
Who would I have been if I were born elsewhere?
What would safety feel like?
How would I have celebrated my birthday?
What would life be like if it weren’t ruled by the constant noise
of warplanes and massacres?

These questions chase me every day, growing louder with time.
War doesn’t only steal safety — it steals even the simplest moments of joy.

In the past 600 days, I grew up more than I had in the previous 17 years.
seventeen years should have been enough to learn how to live.
But in 600 days,
I learned how to survive.
How to pack my life into a small bag.
How to calm a trembling child shaken by explosions.
How to wait for hours in bread and water lines — sometimes for nothing.
I learned that stale bread can be more delicious than a feast, when shared
with someone you love.
I learned how to run from death.
How to lose people I never got the chance to say goodbye to.
I learned that a friend’s name erased from your phone can stay engraved
in your memory forever.

Being born in Gaza means your first lullaby is the sound of a missile.
It means spending your birthdays under roaring jets.
It means growing up among rubble — and still finding a way to play football
between destroyed buildings.

I am not alone.
Everyone my age in Gaza lives between two brackets: loss and survival.
We are not superheroes, nor silent victims — we are a generation born
on the fault line,
raised beneath warplanes, grown up with unforgettable sounds.

We grew up without asking time’s permission.
We learned to count martyrs more than days of the week.
To recognize the direction of a strike from the echo.

To tell whether the plane above us is a drone or an F-16 from the first moment
we heard their noise.

And yet, in the middle of this destruction, we never lost the one thing
they can’t bomb: hope.
We dream of finishing our studies, of falling in love, of living a normal life —
just a normal life.

That’s what makes us more than survivors: we are witnesses.
Witnesses to a time that tried to crush our childhood — but couldn’t erase it from our hearts.
Witnesses to a city destroyed a thousand times—but that rises again, each time,
with the hands of its children.

In Gaza, we don’t grow as individuals — we grow as a collective memory.
We carry our stories like a trust — not to mourn,
but to share them with the world.
So that no one will ever be able to say we were silent, or that we died without
telling anyone we had dreams.

This birthday, I’m not asking for a wish.
Not asking for a trip, or a cake, or a candle.
All I want —
is for the counter to stop.
For me not to count: 601, 602, 603…
I just want a normal day
in a place called life.

Photo: Mohammad Weam Al Ta’ban