While we were celebrating the birthday of my eldest sister Laila on May 28, 2024, everything turned upside down: The sound of relentless artillery shelling, air strikes, and drone fire filled the air. The news offered no clarity, and everyone was left wondering about the source of these sounds.

My phone rang; it was my friend calling. “Fatima, where is this? Is it close to you? Are you hearing what we’re hearing? Take care of yourselves! May God protect you, habibti!”

My family and I gathered in the living room on the first floor of our building. The only sounds were my mother’s whispered prayers and the ceaseless barrage of explosions, making it impossible for us to even blink.

We tried to find news updates, but nothing was clear until, after some time, the news started to come in: The Israeli army was advancing on the Philadelphi corridor and Tal Zourob, swiftly moving towards the center of Rafah!

My father decided we should evacuate to the Mawasi area of Khan Younis. He went to find a transport vehicle to carry what we would need, but he came back empty handed due to the high volume of people fleeing. So, we decided to leave the following day. We packed what we needed and what we wanted to keep, leaving our home to an uncertain fate.

Our sacred place

Our home has long been a sacred place for our family. We thought it would be our place of stability, where we could always return when life got tough, and it would be waiting for us.

My father bought this house with a garden in 2014 after experiencing a long displacement when his house was demolished in 2004 by the Israeli occupation. He had already lived through displacement in Rafah, Khan Younis, and Gaza, and saw this house as his investment and a treasure, a place to gather for all of life’s important memories.

My father chose the location of the house carefully. It was near middle and high schools, not far from the market or even the sea, and in a quiet, new area with a large garden where he could plant flowers. He decorated the entrance with pink flowers and chose the furniture, colors, and design meticulously.

Our house wasn’t just walls and a roof. It was the age of my younger brother Ahmed, whom we eagerly awaited. Ahmed took his first steps in this house, spoke his first words here, laughed and cried here, and experienced his first emotions. We celebrated every year in this house, wishing it would last forever. Now Ahmed is living through his first displacement — forcibly removed from his room, toys, and memories. He pleads, “When we are going home?”

The house witnessed my sister Laila’s success in Tawjihi, the final year in high school, and mine as well. The hope was that, Laila, a doctor, and me, a lawyer, would graduate from this home. It was supposed to witness my younger sister Menna’s success this year, as she’s three years younger than me. I still remember the celebrations when I scored 98.3 in high school and the gatherings in our garden.

This house means everything to me; it is where I belong in this world. Every time I returned home after a long day at university, I would lean my head on the door and say loudly, “Home sweet home” and hear my father reply, “Welcome back, habibti,” with a smile on his face.

Where precious memories were stored

My father kept our memories and his books on the third floor, books he brought back from India after completing his studies. He had always dreamed of having a library where he could sit and share his knowledge and memories with us. Every one of his books had a sentence and a date, and we would read them and say, “A long time has passed, Baba, wow,” and my father would laugh.

One of the sentences he wrote in his books when he was studying in India at Nagpur University, longing for his hometown Rafah, was, “Rafah, don’t forget me, and don’t ask too many questions. I’m coming back, wait for me!” I burst into tears when I read it.

My beloved Rafah, don’t forget me either. Keep waiting for me, I’m coming back home!

My father didn’t just keep books; he kept all our childhood memories, starting with the baby crib that first belonged to my sister Laila and ultimately became Ahmed’s. He even kept clothes from our childhood. I learned from my father that things have value not because of their price, but because of their memories.

A tent, not a home

Now we have been displaced to a refugee camp. Behind our tent, there is a cemetery for martyrs, some of whom were unidentified, while others were identified by their families. In this one area, the fate of the people of Gaza is starkly illustrated: one side living in subhuman conditions and the other side lying cold in their graves, killed unjustly and anonymously.

On the third day of our displacement, we heard crying behind our tent. It was a woman visiting her husband’s grave. They had only been married for a year and a half, and they had a baby girl, just nine months old, “who shared the same name as us.” My heart aches for their uncompleted love and for the little girl who will grow up without knowing her father, without any memories to hold onto.

Since our displacement, we have been listening to the radio, hearing news of “residential blocks being demolished in the Saudi neighborhood” and “artillery shelling targeting the Saudi neighborhood.” In Mawasi Khan Younis, we hear every echo of what is happening in the western part of Rafah, where my home is.

With every explosion, my heart aches. I close my eyes, and the image of my house floods my mind.

Every time I sit in the tent, I recall all the memories we couldn’t take with us. My books, which I wanted to keep to show my children when we visited Grandpa’s big house, are left behind.

Will my father return to his books? Will I return to my library, to my room? Will I stand before my mirror again? Will we gather once more in the dining room, praising my mother’s cooking? Will we return to sit in the garden at night? Will I stand in front of our house again and say how beautiful the flowers are? Will our laughter return to the corners of the house?

How long will this longing last? How long will it take to reunite?

Sixty days of displacement feels like 60 years of displacement. Longing for our home is killing me; I want just one more second there, just one more moment and nothing more. To me, displacement means being exhausted from the longing for your home and worrying about its uncertain fate.

Loss of home, loss of self

Since the war began, I’ve felt like I’m losing a part of myself every day. I tried to fight this feeling by clinging to the things I love, but since we left our home, I have lost myself. I lost my identity and all my emotions, except for an overwhelming longing for home — my room, my bed, my mirror, our swing.

Now, the only vision I have of life is not to be killed.

I no longer want to know why I exist, as I might be killed the next second and I will be remembered as only a number in the news (“another Gazan was killed today”). Does it matter?

I write this as I am sitting down in the street trying to access internet and a nearby tent is playing Takbirat Al-Eid, chants recited during the Islamic festivals of Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha. It brings me to tears.

I can’t believe right now that I’m hearing the voice I used to hear while sitting in my room doing my hair and my skin care routine, preparing for Al-Eid. From my room window I used to be able to see our beautiful Taiba mosque, which has been targeted since we were forced to evacuate our lovely home.

Now, I ask, where is home, and what does my home even look like now? How does the outside world continue to live? How do they love? How do they pursue their dreams and education? How do they build families and seek stability? How do they strive for a stable job without the fear that it could all be taken away in a second? How do they live without being consumed by fear?

We recently received news about our home when the army withdrew from the western area of Rafah temporarily. It is now half gone, half destroyed, half not existed! I’m drained and tired from my false hope. All my dreams of being home have been shattered, but I still long to go back home — whatever is left of it.