Making coffee using the gas we finally obtained after 10 months. Photo: Shahed AbuAlShaikh

“Bring your gas cylinder to the distributor to receive your allotment of cooking gas.”

This is a message capable of making hearts race and prompting long ululations from mothers.

Before October 7, 2023, life in Gaza resembled life anywhere else. There was electricity (though not continuous), buildings, restaurants, hotels, elegant shops, and universities with impressive campuses. Everyone was busy with their ordinary lives, making plans for their futures. For me personally, I was waiting for my graduation to become a teaching assistant.

Among the many ordinary things we had was cooking gas, which was used to make delicious food such as maqluba, a rice dish filled with fried chicken and vegetables. We never worried about running out of gas because we could refill anytime we needed, and people could even fill two or three cylinders at once: one for the oven, one for the stove, and one as backup. Each cylinder contained 12 kilograms of gas and cost no more than $20.

My mother—and all mothers in Gaza—used to make the most delicious roast chicken. Once the food was cooked, she would place the chicken on a tray and put it in the oven so it would brown nicely, look appetizing, and smell wonderful.

After the war broke out on October 7, 2023, each day felt like traveling backwards in time. Every tall building became rubble, no more than piles of stones blocking the way. Every ordinary pleasure became an inaccessible luxury, like taking a warm shower under the showerhead or having a light on in your house. The crossings into Gaza were closed to tighten the noose on people and deprive them of every possible basic necessity.

Naturally, gas began to disappear less than a month into the war—from homes, filling stations, bakeries, restaurants, and every place where it had existed without question. The era of firewood began: making fire, collecting wood, cooking over flames. A crisis with no end. Everyone learned how to break wood into smaller pieces and light fires just to prepare a simple meal or single drink. It was as if comfort vanished from Gaza along with the gas.

Our sky turned into smoke, our air into pollution, and our lungs into soot. Wherever you walked, you could smell the smoke rising from fires. Every day you had to buy wood—and then spend hours trying to chop it into smaller pieces so it would ignite. For mothers, the hardest sacrifice was using their beautiful, high-quality pots and kitchen tools over open flames, ruining them with thick black soot that stained their clothes and hands.

Cooking vessels covered in soot. Photo: Shahed AbuAlShaikh

Every pot used to cook on a fire brought new sorrow to a mother’s heart. How could she not feel sad about her cookware, which once shone beautifully over a gas stove, filled with the tastiest food in the loveliest kitchen? Mothers humbled themselves before the fire, begging it to ignite and stay lit long enough to finish a meal. Many times, they cried from helplessness and lack of wood.

But of course, running out of gas was not the only problem.

The rising price of firewood became a major crisis for all families in Gaza. A kilogram of wood used to cost $1; as the crisis continued, it rose to $4. One kilogram isn’t even enough for even a single meal, so many families sent their children to the streets to collect paper and cardboard from the ground.

As the famine worsened and prices soared, firewood began to disappear and became hard to find, because people were hiding it, hoping its price would rise even more. 

In July 2024, goods and gas were allowed through the crossing and rationed out to families. With gas available, firewood reappeared at reasonable prices, which came as a shock to those who had tried to hide it.

But in February 2025, the crossing was closed again due to the end of the latest truce. We were again without gas.

The crossing finally reopened to goods with the ceasefire negotiated this fall. After months of fires that destroyed our health,  gas began coming in, though in quantities much smaller than before. Still, it entered, and that’s what mattered. We would finally be free of fire. We would refill our gas cylinder whenever we needed, cook cleanly again without smoke, soot, or lung diseases.

Like the earlier rationing system, each family was allowed about one cylinder every two months, depending on how much gas entered. Each cylinder contained only 8 kilograms instead of 12 and cost $25. A family that once needed a full cylinder and a half per month (about 18 kilograms) was now forced to live with only 8 for double the time.

But it didn’t matter; the joy of seeing gas return erased every obstacle and sorrow. Everyone waited for the message from the gas distributors with the same anticipation as waiting for news to announce the end of the war.

It was as if gas signaled the beginning of a new life, one resembling how we lived before. And indeed, the message announcing our turn for a gas cylinder changed the entire atmosphere in our tent. My mother screamed with joy as she read it, my father said “Alhamdulilah,” and we children clapped and danced for the sake of a single gas cylinder.

Of course, I immediately called my uncles, joking, “Congratulate us—we got gas and you didn’t!” We truly are a people who love life and deserve it.

After sending the cylinder for refilling, we began a massive campaign to clean the pots and utensils that had been burned and blackened for more than 10 months. The cleaning went on for hours, turning our clothes and hands black, but we were happy, because this day had come after such a long wait.

First, I made coffee on the gas stove so I could enjoy drinking it easily without the hassle of lighting the fire and blowing on it. And my mom decided to fry us some eggs on it, since eggs entered Gaza around the same time gas returned after more than 10 months of shortage and deprivation. Everyone was happy, even the children who didn’t really know what “gas” means. Now they know.