As winter approaches and the raindrops gather in the clouds, preparing to come down, my mind, too, gathers the memories of the past winter.

For me, winter is a time of nostalgia — a time to revisit favorite moments held close. I can never resist its lovely ritual, curling up with a book in one hand and a hot drink in the other, sitting next to the fireplace while enjoying the sound of rain tapping gently on the window.

Today, memories of our last winter returned. I thought my mind had left them behind, but they were lying in wait, ready to flare with even the slightest breeze of recognition, searing my soul once more.

Lying on a mattress in displacement, I had chosen a book by Mourid Barghouti, “I Was Born There, I Was Born Here.” I was hoping to find joy in its pages, yet his words awakened something raw in me, words that spoke to my soul as if he’d lived the horrors I had.

My heart tore in two as I felt what Barghouti had endured. The spark that lit the fire of my painful memories came from his powerful words:

“Displacement is like death. One thinks it happens only to other people.… He is despised for being a stranger or sympathized with for being a stranger. The second is harder to bear than the first.… But I do know that the stranger can never go back to what he was. Even if he returns, it is over. A person gets ‘displacement’ as he gets asthma, and there is no cure for either.”

Last winter, we were like Ibn Battuta, the explorer from the 1300s.  Unlike him, who eagerly sought out new destinations, we were forced to move and sometimes were not clear of our destinations. We were displaced 14 times under rockets and bitter cold. I didn’t know such fear and despair could exist. We just needed to survive, to find somewhere, anywhere, that was less dangerous than the place we had just left. And unlike Ibn Battuta, who traveled by camel caravan and ship, we were displaced on foot, carrying our personal belongings and some food.

One time, over 24 people took shelter in a distant relative’s house. Another day, another displacement, and five families crammed in another house.

Needless to say, there were just a few winter blankets. These were distributed between the two older people, a heavily pregnant woman, and three other children. The rest of us had to make do with thin summer blankets. My share of the blankets was a light summer bedsheet. Men slept on the ground with nothing but a layer of fabric separating them from the freezing earth, and women slept on single couches.

I don’t know if Barghouti experienced such circumstances, but I understand what he said about displacement profusely, for no one can truly understand what an evacuee feels except another evacuee.

And there’s no cure to ease the bitterness, fearfulness, and helplessness in the evacuee’s heart.

“The sorrowful, undeniable truth now is that I no longer know the geography of my country,” Barghouti writes.

Every day, I wake to the rubble outside my window. I refuse to believe that this place that once was full of trees and buildings is now but a heap of debris. Rubble covers the entire view.

I knew this place for most of my life. How can I believe my eyes when I see that every building and every tree that was etched in my mind has now vanished? Is my mind betraying me, or is it my eyes? Who should I believe now?

Amidst this disorientation, I never imagined there would come a day when I couldn’t find something as simple as water. There were days when we couldn’t find a sip of water to drink, be it clean or not. When winter fell last year, the old woman who hosted us at that time put pots on the roof so we could collect rainwater to drink. Every day for five months, when water was available from distribution sources, my brothers painstakingly retrieved by foot a gallon or two, which was shared by three families. It was all we had to wash our hands. We rationed the rest for the barest necessities. I, the one who showered twice or thrice a day before the onslaught, have now gone over 70 days, , with one exception, without a shower or a change of clothes.

Water is not the only simple thing that I miss. For 13 months, I have yearned to sleep on my bed, sitting in my room alone, without having a dozen people in the same space. I miss privacy. I miss waking up to the annoying alarm sound, not the airstrikes.

After five months of displacing, we were displaced again. I couldn’t even wash my own blood from my clothes after being injured. I didn’t have the luxury of changing them because I had no extra clothes. I only cleaned them with wet wipes.

Unease settles in my chest as, with a shattered heart, I turn the last page of Barghouti’s book. The uncertainty looms over me like the gathering storm clouds outside.

I can’t shake the feeling of dread. What will this winter show us? I don’t even want to think about it. Only time will tell what new memories this winter will write into the pages of my life.