One dictionary meaning of “evacuation” is the orderly movement of people away from a place of danger. In Gaza, evacuation is not orderly, nor is it to move people away from danger. For us, this word is heavy with emotions a heart can barely endure: fear, longing for people, places, and even walls, and going to nowhere! And as the evacuations are repeated, the losses and longings mount.

On Oct. 7, 2023, when I arrived at school in preparation for a demonstration lesson I had prepared, the streets were empty and the school was devoid of students. I felt apprehensive that a war was knocking on our doors, again! There were hardly any cars available, and I had to pay a driver triple the fare to make him agree to take me home. It was the beginning of a true journey of loss and grief! The war started, and evacuation after evacuation followed.

On the 44th day, my older brother, Mohammed, advised my father to take our family to the south, as the north was growing increasingly dangerous. We went on foot as millions of others did, carrying our futures in a single bag. We soon discovered that the Israeli Occupation Forces were blocking the way, making it impossible for us to go south. My father decided to return to my uncle’s house and remain there even if there was an invasion. While we were making our way back, we faced a stream of people evacuating in the opposite direction. We could no longer go there.

Unknown destinations

We — four sisters, four brothers, and my parents — had nowhere to go but to one of the nearest schools. In a room measuring 4 by 4 meters, there were more than 15 individuals.

Another outcome of evacuation is the loss of any sense of the private and personal. My father and brothers slept on the school pathways, while we tried to sleep in a room where bombing at night was so intense you felt bombs were falling inside the school itself! We discovered that evacuation to safety is a cruel illusion.

Each fresh attempt to flee south left us feeling more and more exposed and vulnerable. For my father especially, his being is rooted in Gaza. He can breathe life there. Other places leave him with a sense of futile emptiness. This is how it is in settings where life is hard and every day is a challenge — home and land take on special significance.

Sometimes we even had to pack to evacuate to nowhere!

“Evacuating again? No, please! Where are we going to go this time, dad?” I asked.

“Let’s evacuate and get ready. Then we see what happens, like most people do.” My sisters and I break into tears!

“I’m tired of going around in circles. I don’t want to go anywhere.”

For evacuees in Gaza, there is no final destination. My father moved us next to our aunt’s home in Deir Al-Balah.  She welcomed us but was already housing two other families of evacuees, so my father asked her to only take the women — four girls, two nieces, and my mum — while my brothers and father would go to my cousin’s tent. We lived with our aunt for two months, and though she was extremely kind, we felt the loss in being a split family and made a collective decision to live all together in a tent. Living in a place you own is a million times better than living in the houses of others.

Building joy out of loss

After the loss of connection to home and self, the challenge of any evacuee is to establish some kind of routine to fill the days with new meaning. Being in a tent does not cancel our identity.  Even though the weather is unbearably hot and living in a tent is never easy, we started to adapt, finding useful things to do. My sisters recited the entire Holy Qur’an of 604 pages, which they had memorized years before. They recited it from beginning to end, which takes about 12 hours. In the Muslim world this is considered one of the greatest achievements.

They also joined university courses online and started to study in the tent, and guess what? They achieved a high rank! They downloaded innumerable PDF books on their mobiles and started to read them all. And we found some joy as well when we celebrated my father’s birthday with cake and a wish to re-celebrate the next year in our real home.

Craving for home

The hope of returning to Gaza occupies every evacuee. “When to go back?” is the question that echoes though every single day. Here in the Gaza Strip, people are divided into two areas: the north, and the south. The people in the north are experiencing days of very little food. Fruit and vegetables do not exist there. Eating an apple has become a dream. However, because people are staying in the areas where they were nurtured, their psychological morale is often better than those who were displaced to the south.

We who live in the south have food. Though it is more expensive than normal, it is available. Most evacuees either live in their relatives’ homes, or more usually in tents. They experience all the bad things a tent “offers.” If you ask any evacuee, “What do you wish for?” they will invariably reply: “I want to return home, even if it is completely destroyed. I want to build my tent on the land I own.” People in the south are eaten up by the regret of leaving and evacuating because it seems completely impossible to return.

From privation comes new understanding

The constant deprivation of evacuation brings new understandings. We used to complain about our old house until we lived in a tent. We used to complain about our crowded cupboards until we had to escape with two or three pieces of clothing. We used to complain about the electricity coming for only a handful of hours a day until we lost it completely. We used to complain about the shoes we had until we lived for more than seven months in one pair of shoes.

We used to complain about what mum cooked until we found nothing to eat. We used to complain about how tiring work was until we realized this “tiring” routine was what gave us life.

I am sorry now, my darling routine. Perhaps we needed this to realize the Allah’s gifts to us.

Though for many, “evacuation” is an innocuous-sounding word of 10 letters and five syllables, for Gazans, there are all kinds of horrors hidden in its letters.

E: Engulfed in regret

V: Vulnerable and open to attack

A: Abused for being Palestinian

C: Craving for home

U: Unhinged by anxiety

A: Abandoned and abused

T: Tired of living

I: Injustice

O: Oppression

N: Nowhere becomes its own destination