The author, Ahmad Mohammed Abushawish, holds his sister Aleen, 2, who is growing up during a genocide. Photo: Omran Abushawish

On March 23, 2023, my youngest sister, Aleen, was born—seven years after my youngest brother, Khaled.

Aleen grew up in a tender environment, surrounded by warmth and care. Her innocent smile became the lantern that lit our days. We watched her discover the world with wide-eyed wonder. The youngest of five children, she had considerable attention from all of us. I was constantly buying her toys and counting the days for her to grow a little bit so that I could buy her some treats such as chocolates and biscuits.   

But childhood in Gaza does not remain untouched. When the genocide began, Aleen was barely 7 months old, and she was forced to endure unthinkable circumstances.

I remember one night in October 2023 that felt like a nightmare. The Israeli occupation began to bomb Al Zahra Towers—a small town close to Al-Nuseirat camp, where we live. With every rocket that rained down, it felt as if our hearts would stop. Each explosion shook the ground beneath us, and we instinctively covered our heads, convinced the next strike would fall on our home.

These were our feelings as adults. Now imagine the reaction of children. That night, we placed cotton in Aleen’s tiny ears, trying to soften the terrifying noise. We were afraid she might be harmed, or even die, from the sheer horror of the sounds.

What happened that night became a routine for the next two years. For Aleen, it became the environment in which her childhood was shaped.

We tried to shield Aleen from the horrors of genocide by pretending to be cheerful whenever we heard the echo of an explosion. It was our psychological defense as an act of protecting Aleen and the way to convince her that nothing was wrong. But sometimes the blasts were too sudden, too violent, for our humor to mask.

One such night, an Israeli airstrike struck a building near us. The glass from our windows splintered into sharp fragments, and the heavy smell of gunpowder filled the air. Instinctively, I rushed to Aleen. She sat frozen, her face marked by shock, unable even to cry. I scooped her into my arms, held her tightly against my shoulder—and only then did she release a trembling, heart-wrenching cry that seemed to carry all her fear at once. 

Aleen Abushawish’s family is trying to protect her from fear and deprivation. Photo: Omran Abushawish

Those endless nights and days of fear forced Aleen to develop an attitude far different from children her age elsewhere. 

I asked my parents if they noticed differences between Aleen and us, her older siblings, at the same age. My mother told me, “When you and Khaled were toddlers, your first words were ‘Mama’ and ‘Baba.’ You played with toy cars and blocks. But Aleen’s world is filled with sounds of planes and explosions. She knows these before she knows colors.”

I noticed it each time she made progress in her earliest words and behaviors.

As Aleen’s peers around the world grow, they learn to distinguish between colors, recognize different kinds of food and begin to spell words like “apple,” “ball” or “mama.”

In contrast, when Aleen turned 2, she began to sound out words she was never meant to know at such a young age. Among her first were “jet” and “bomb.” She recognized these words instantly, saying them the moment she heard the roar of an Israeli fighter plane flying low and accelerating until it broke the sound barrier—releasing a thunderous, deafening noise, perhaps as a show of power, or even amusement, by the pilot.

The moment Aleen heard that sound, she would rush into my arms, shouting: “Jet! Jet! It will bomb!” She would bury her face against me, covering her eyes—as if hiding them could shield her from the danger.

Aleen grew up with these sounds until, strangely, they became her companions. Step by step, even our daily conversations could not escape the language of war, and our routine was never complete without two hours of listening to the radio for the latest news.

As a result, she learned to distinguish between them all—the very weapons the Israeli occupation used against us.

She could tell the difference between the constant buzzing of drones and the noise of military aircrafts. 

She knew how to separate the explosions of jet-dropped bombs from the heavier, ground-shaking blasts of tank shells by the distinct whistling they made before impact. 

She even recognized the sound of planes that dropped humanitarian aid. The moment she heard them, Aleen would run to the window, pointing excitedly at the parachutes floating down from the sky, shouting: “Aid! Aid!”

On the other hand, I remember once managing to buy a cluster of grapes from the market—the grapes that most children around the world take for granted, but which Aleen was probably seeing for the very first time. She looked at it curiously and asked, “What is this?” Then she held one in her tiny hands and began to play with it as if it were a toy. 

I told her to taste it. She hesitated at first but once she took one, her eyes glowed. She had never tasted anything as sweet and tangy. 

Research confirms what I see in my sister. A recent study on Gaza’s children conducted by the Mental Health and Psychosocial Support Program Manager for Medical Aid for Palestinians in Gaza found that “the first words of early childhood are often saturated with the vocabulary of conflict and danger, rather than colors, animals, or everyday objects.” The paper also shows that war and hunger work together to delay symbolic and emotional expression, producing what experts call a “distorted linguistic environment.”

Aleen learned the language of war and danger, distinguishing drones from fighter aircrafts. Photo: Omran Abushawish

The reality is that Aleen can distinguish the sounds of war with a precision that even a military analyst might struggle to match. At the same time, she is unable to tell the difference between basic kinds of food. 

We live in a profoundly unfair world.

These moments reveal how war has rewritten the very foundation of her childhood. For children elsewhere, life is divided into colors, games, and toys. For Aleen, it is divided into the buzzing of drones, the roar of jets, the blasts of bombs, and the rattle of tank shells.

And Aleen is not alone. In therapeutic drawing sessions—psychotherapy sessions that use art and drawing as a form of expression instead of relying solely on speech—I have witnessed children sketching rockets, tanks, and military jets to voice their emotions, rather than drawing animals, gardens, or the simple joys of childhood. “This is what I see every day,” said Abdullah Al Shrafi, a psychologist working at Nasser Hospital. 

One moment that has never left me was when I volunteered with my father during a relief and psychological support session for 4- to 12-year-old children. I handed out papers with outlines of stars and asked the kids to color them in. 

As I walked among them, I noticed Malak, a 4-year-old girl, refusing to participate. Curious, I gently asked her why.

Her response struck me to the core: “The stars are bombing us—why should I paint them?” She was pointing to the night sky, where rockets and warplanes replaced the twinkling stars.

They have even poisoned the stars in the minds of children.

Only then did I realize that the occupation had succeeded in stealing every meaning of childhood.

This has become the reality for nearly every child in Gaza—those born into this genocide and those forced to grow up during it. Their vocabulary is laced with words of destruction. Their imaginations are shaped by survival and confined by fear. Instead of learning to count stars, they count explosions; instead of recognizing the taste of fruits, they recognize the smell of gunpowder.

This article is co-published with Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.