Deema Abu Seif in training at a medical center. She never had the chance to wear the white coat as a professional pharmacist. Photo provided by Shoug Mukhaimar

Around 2 a.m., a violent explosion suddenly shook the walls of my house. I sat bolt upright, my heart pounding. The windows trembled, the air turned heavy with fear. My first thought was confusion—weren’t we in a ceasefire?

The bomb had struck just a short walk from my home in Al-Nuseirat. I didn’t know yet that Deema, the girl I’d grown up with, the friend I shared schoolbooks and secrets with, was under the rubble.

After the January 2025 ceasefire was announced, Deema Abu Seif and her family, like many others in Gaza, returned to their home holding onto a fragile hope that maybe, just maybe, the danger had passed. That night, after one year and three months of war and displacement, they slept under their own roof.

We met when we were just girls in school—two classmates who became best friends, sharing dreams, competing playfully in our studies, and standing side-by-side on stage during the morning assemblies at which students recited poetry, share news, read Qur’anic verses, and performed short plays or skits.

We graduated with honors, each choosing her own path in university, but always remaining close. We were both nearing the end of our studies when the war came and shattered everything. Still, we held on to hope.

Her pharmacist’s coat, unworn

Deema, the only daughter in a home of two sons, had always known what she wanted to be. From a young age, she dreamed of becoming a pharmacist, not for prestige, but out of purpose. She longed to wear the white coat, to walk the hospital corridors with a giving heart and a pure spirit, offering care to her people and easing their pain. She poured herself into her studies with determination.

Over a year into the war, I went to a local medical center. There, by chance, I saw Deema again. She was training in the pharmacy, still chasing her dream with the same passion I had always admired. We embraced tightly. For a moment, it felt like the war hadn’t stolen so much.

We spoke for what felt like both a second and a lifetime—reminiscing about school memories, sharing how much had changed, and how much pain we were carrying. Deema told me how excited she was for our approaching graduation. She believed the war couldn’t last forever. She told me how she still clung to her books and her faith in the future. She dreamed of owning her own pharmacy.

We didn’t say farewell, because we thought we still had time.

But on March 18, 2025, just days before Deena could graduate, before she could wear the pharmacist’s coat she had waited for all her life, the occupation ended her story. Her two brothers and their families were killed alongside her, leaving their parents behind.

Her words erased

Deema is gone, but she will never be forgotten.

They reduced her to a number in a long list of names, but she will never be just a number or name to me. She was not a statistic.

She lit up our classrooms. I remember one winter morning when the electricity was out and the classroom was cold and dark. Deema walked in with her bright smile, carrying a bag full of tangerines from her family’s garden. She tossed them playfully to each of us.

Deema was a gifted writer, too. During the war, she began working on a novel entitled “Bullets of a Pen,” a raw and personal account of what it means to grow up under siege. She poured her pain, her memories, and her longing for justice into its pages, typing it all into her phone, the only tool she had.

But when her home was bombed, that phone was buried in the rubble, and with it, her words erased before they could be read. The occupation not only took her life but also silenced the voice she had worked so hard to preserve.

This story is my way of saying her name out loud because silence is the final injustice. I want the world to know who she was, what she dreamed of, and what the occupation took from her.

She was Deema Abu Seif.

And she deserved so much more.