Oct. 7, 2023, or what I like to call the beginning of the end, changed my life completely and forever. Soon after the war started, the Israeli military classified our neighborhood as a “red zone” and sent their jets to randomly bomb our homes for no apparent reason. Fearing for our lives, my mum decided we had to leave our home and move in with distant cousins in Beit Lahiya, another neighborhood in the north of Gaza.
A month later, after Israeli jets started targeting homes in Beit Lahiya, we decided to move once more and headed out on foot toward the middle of Gaza. After walking for four hours, we were confronted by Israeli tanks and had to stand for two more hours until we were permitted to walk past them.
We eventually reached Nuseirat camp in the middle of Gaza. After spending a month there, we had to run for our lives again, this time to Rafah, in South Gaza. There we arrived, homeless and alone, with no family or other support network to help us. Eventually, we found our way to a displacement camp on the Gaza coast, where we were assigned a tent. We are among the thousands of Gazan families who have lost their homes and fled to the south.
Our life in the camp has been both hard and annoying. We wake up early every morning because it is so hot and noisy in the tent. Living with hundreds of other people in a small camp means none of us has any privacy.
After about six weeks, I noticed that the kids in the camp had nothing to do all day other than wait for food distribution time, when they would all grab their plates and run to get their share of beans and canned food. I wanted to do something to improve their lives.
After witnessing this painful scene play out every day for weeks, my family and I decided to act. By that point, half of Gaza’s schools had been destroyed; the rest had been converted to shelters for people who had lost their homes.
While parents are rightfully focused on the survival of their families, we looked for a way to bring some joy and learning into the lives of the children in the camp. After all, these children are the future of Gaza and the Palestinian people. They will be the painters who will color our darkness. They will be our doctors, engineers, teachers, and scientists. They will be our future leaders; they need to be educated.
The idea for a school grew gradually from our sense of responsibility for our camp’s children. One evening while we were discussing what my nephew and niece had been doing since the beginning of the war, my aunt offered a suggestion. “Why don’t we teach them instead of allowing them to do nothing all day?”
We started by thinking of how we could help our nephew and niece. “They can’t just come inside and study while their friends are playing,” one of my brothers commented. Soon we were dreaming of what we could do for all the children in the camp. Out of that small family chat, we decided to start looking for more children to teach.
My brother and I were the first volunteer teachers. “I’ll teach math and you teach English,” he said. One of our neighbors volunteered to teach the Quran; my sister volunteered to teach Arabic. After another neighbor donated a blackboard, we bought chalk from a small booth in the street. “We can start without pencils and notebooks,” my brother said. “All we need is students.”
We looked for elementary school-age children (ages five to 12) because they need more attention and support than older children. As we walked from tent to tent letting people know about our idea for a school, we found many children interested in attending and adults eager to volunteer. Some of them had been teachers before the war. We all understand how important it is to educate the children of Gaza.
One of the first problems we faced was where to house our school. None of us had access to a building; we were all living in tents. Thankfully, my family let us turn my brothers’ sleeping tent into a classroom between 8:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. on school days. During that time, we teach four one-hour classes covering subjects necessary for a basic education: Arabic, English, Math, and Quran.
Every day the children sing, color, and play while they learn. Play and games are central to their learning process, both because they make learning fun and because they help divert the children’s attention from their dire surroundings. We also try to address the special needs children have from being in a camp with hundreds of other people seeking refuge from endless death and destruction.
We try to support our students psychologically, by giving them space to share their thoughts by talking, drawing, playing and, of course, laughing. We nurture the children’s talents by encouraging them to sing a lesson, draw a situation, or dance a feeling. We don’t want to place any limits on their education.
News of our school has spread faster than an airstrike. Not only are people interested in sending their children to our school, but many have volunteered to help or donate supplies, such as notebooks, a blackboard, pens, pencils, crayons, and coloring books. We now have a real school with five teachers, more than 60 students, and 30 on the waiting list.
As I sit and look at kids singing songs and reading stories, I can’t help but feel proud. I am proud we could translate our dream into reality and help 60 of the children in our camp learn and enjoy what’s left of their stolen childhood.
Check out a reel of school life on Instagram.
