we are not numbers
emerging writers from Palestine tell their stories and advocate for their human rights
After our house was destroyed, I transformed our shelter tent into a classroom to teach children who had been deprived of education.
Some of the children I taught in our educational tent. Photo: Ohood Nassar
In the middle of January 2025, I created an educational classroom in a tent next to our devastated house. Our house had been destroyed in mid-November 2023—that’s what our neighbors told us. When our house was bombed, we had already evacuated to my aunt’s house because it was too dangerous to stay.
Before the war, I used to volunteer at an UNRWA school, where I taught all subjects to second-grade students. Now my educational tent could hold more than 100 students, all of whom had been deprived of their education since October 7, 2023.
Before then, many of the children were still heading to their schools, to sit on their favorite seats and meet their friends. But soon the sound of the missiles prevented them from venturing out.
At the beginning of the genocide, I thought the sound of missiles was the sound of thunder, so I was only afraid of oncoming rain. But after a while, I realized that this thunderous noise was the sound of missiles. The sky was full of rockets. I was afraid. I was controlled by fear. I thought I would not survive.
One day I had asked my student Muhammad to share his story. He concluded with the terrible description of what happened to him, and how scared he was. I admitted to him and the other students, “I also thought that it was a storm and not the sound of rockets.” Everyone laughed and, in one voice, we said together, “We also believed that it was the sound of thunder!”
My educational tent was a warm and loving place, embracing my students and giving them knowledge. I always followed my lessons with play, to try to relieve the students and calm them down. Every week, I brought games and balls, and played music for them. We’d pass a ball around and whoever was holding it when the music stopped would answer questions. I also brought a toy panda into the tent; I asked the students to share their stories and their dreams while holding the panda.
Our tent was decorated with games and pictures made by the students. Its seats were clean and white, and there was a small blackboard at the front. Despite the tent’s small size, it was large enough to hold my students’ dreams.
Most of my students were orphans and had been trapped in Jabalia. They were suffering and had lost all sense of hope. I devoted myself to supporting their emotional recovery. I wanted to help them find hope and stability through learning. They felt that the war was an obstacle to achieving their dreams, but I always encouraged them and pushed them to express their aspirations.
A student named Hoda, 12, told me that she had hoped to become a doctor, but that now she’d abandoned her dreams because of the war and the end of her education. She spoke in a sad tone, full of brokenness.
“You are stronger than your circumstances,” I told her. “You must continue to seek and not stop. You must strive to fulfill your dreams despite the difficult circumstances. This educational tent is a school for you.”
While I was teaching this class, I was also completing my own university studies; we were all learning together. I reminded my students that God would reward us, despite our fatigue, and that we must be patient.
For five months, despite the relentless war and bombardment, my students continued their lessons. Our determination was stronger than fear.
In mid-May, I went to my educational tent, as I did every other day. I felt hopeful that today would be better than yesterday, and I tried to share and spread my positive vitality with the students. I told them that I intended to hold two competitions.: The first required that they memorize a surah from the Holy Qur’an, and the second invited them to write a true story describing something they experienced during the war. I promised a valuable gift for the winner of each competition: the best memorization of the Qur’an and the best story.
I went back to my house and started gathering up my recorded lectures and preparing for my midterm tests, which were in only a few days. My brother’s voice stopped me—he was screaming, telling me to leave the house because the Israeli army had just threatened the house next to us.
Abruptly I left my house and its memories, my educational tent, my students and their dreams, and I started moving from one place to another, seeking safety.
After three days, we arrived in western Gaza and I started to try to communicate with my students; I’d kept their phone numbers. One of the first students I reached out to was Ahmed, who lived in the same complex where my family rented our home. I asked him how he was and how his friends were.
Crying as he spoke, he said, “The tent was my school, where I spent the most beautiful days of my life, and now we’ve lost it.” Ahmed had seen, with his own eyes, the fire devouring the place where we had shared so many lessons and dreams.
This was how I learned that the tent, our classroom we all made together, was destroyed. My heart was torn. We’d lost the tent just as we were using it to create unity and hope.
I tried to reassure Ahmed that we would gather our strength and move past these circumstances, and that we could build another tent. But I also needed someone to reassure me. I felt my own anguish and heartbreak.
Now, in the overcrowded areas of western Gaza, I have no space or resources to set up another educational tent.
It is painful to feel this exhausted, to lose my dreams, and for my students to feel they’ve lost their dreams, too—all because we live in Gaza during these harsh and difficult times.
