Photo of Amal Rafiq’s neighborhood, taken by her brother

The first time

It was 11 a.m. when chaos exploded in my neighborhood. Screams pierced the air. People were running in every direction—scared, lost, and exhausted. It took us a few moments to understand what was happening. Another warning—they were going to bomb a house dangerously close to ours. 

In Gaza, houses cling to each other. There are no real gaps between us—we share everything: our sadness, our laughter, our food, and even our fear. Our neighborhood is not just a collection of homes; it’s a close-knit family. No one is ever absent from the daily gathering after sunset, huddled in a dark corner under a sky bright with danger, talking about the current situation, finding solutions, or just sharing the heavy weight that each heart carries. Together, we have lived through massacres, mourned the souls we’ve lost, and survived grief side by side. Many houses here stand half-broken, but proud—wounded warriors refusing to fall.

When the news spread, panic set in. We stumbled into one another as if running blindly through darkness because time, in these moments, is never on our side. They usually give a few minutes before the missiles rain down, minutes that feel like seconds. 

I was sitting beside my mother, who had recently undergone surgery. She could barely move or walk. My younger brother was at school—not a real one, just tents stitched together in our neighborhood for children to learn something, play with each other, and escape the horrors. My older brother was in the market. My father was preparing firewood to cook our meal for the day.

Within seconds, our home filled with people, familiar faces and strangers alike. Though our house wasn’t far from the potential strike, it was the only option for many, and waiting outside in the street meant risking injury from flying debris and shards of concrete.

From the window, I saw the family whose house was targeted for bombing leaving their home, clutching children, bags, and memories—knowing they might return to nothing but ashes.

I led my mother and little brother, along with other guests, into the room my father said was safest.

I picked up the phone to call my older brother, hoping to warn him about the new orders so he wouldn’t come back through the danger area, but his phone rang on the table; he had forgotten it. I exchanged glances with my father, silent and heavy, and prayed that the fear in our eyes would not come true. I sat beside my mother again.

Neighbors shared their stories. One had been cooking and left the fire on, another ran without shoes, and the children nervously told me how fast they sprinted home when the warning came. I smiled gently at them and gave a small, proud nod, pretending everything was fine.

Then silence fell. Everybody was ready to hear that bomb at any time. It felt like the heartbeats were louder than the clock’s ticking. Mothers checked on their children one by one, as if their eyes were counting their breaths.

I kept thinking about my mother, how much she had already endured, and of my brother who hadn’t returned yet.  Minutes stretched to hours. The sun blazed like fire. The buzzing of drones grew louder and louder, and now the ticking of the clock hit us like hammer blows. Then—after three long, suffocating hours—nothing happened.

One by one, people began to leave, aware that the bomb might still fall at any moment. I asked one neighbor to wait a bit longer, but she replied, “We decided to keep faith in our hearts. If our time has not come, we will live—and if it has, nothing we do can change it. We take precautions, but in the end, we surrender to God’s will.” She reminded me of the Qur’anic verse: “Wherever you may be, death will overtake you, even if you should be within towers of lofty construction.”

I stood at our glass-shattered door and whispered a prayer that my neighborhood would not live through another tragedy. My brother returned, my father continued preparing the fire, and I helped my mother lie down and rest. Life went on, heavy, painful, but somehow still standing because of our faith.

Later, I saw the neighbors whose home had been threatened return to their house. I knew they had no other place to go. They returned not just out of choice, but out of faith; without it, we would be lost.

The second time

This wasn’t the only time the warnings turned out to be false. And that’s the cruelest part: you never know when they’re real. It happened again but this time in the middle of the night. We were all asleep. The only sounds were the drones humming above—a sound we’ve become too familiar with, with distant explosions shaking the house from time to time.

Then suddenly, the shouting began. Our neighbor called out with a tired, hoarse voice, urging us to evacuate after receiving a call to warn the area. We were all sleeping next to each other in our wide living room. After a few seconds, we woke up darting around in fear as we gathered our things in the dark—phones, clothes, ID cards. My father told us we would go to his friend’s house.

Outside, the street was full of people. I could barely recognize the faces. Groups flashed their phone lights to guide their way. The buzzing above us was deafening. We arrived at the house where other neighbors had already gathered. We sat in a small, dark room. Children slept on the floor. No one spoke much. We exchanged fragments of talk, too tired to offer hope, too scared to sleep.

Again—nothing happened. Another false warning, another sleepless night.  Another terrifying memory.

And the third?

The fear in Gaza is not fleeting—it’s our daily companion. It wakes with us, eats with us, and lies down beside us at night. To live in anxiety has become our new normal. As if our nervous systems have turned into screaming alarm sirens. Here in Gaza, we’ve tasted all colors, forms, and shapes of fear.

But not all warnings are false. And sometimes they bomb without warning, and the place you’re sitting in becomes your grave. That’s why even false alarms break us—they make us live in a permanent state of fear, never knowing if the next minute will be our last.

Both times, the warnings turned out to be false, but who knows what the next second holds?