To the world, a loss of life is one life too many. What of the people of Palestine!

For the Palestinian people, the occupation can take our lives, our dignity every second, every minute and at all times. We are in a daily horror.

I miss you and I miss every moment I lived with you. How can I live without you when you were my life? You give me life, hope, love, and everything beautiful. How can I live without you? You left, and with you, everything left. Life has no meaning without you, the storm of memories make my soul split. How will I be happy after that and continue in life!? I never expected that one day I would write to you and you wouldn’t read my letter.

I am writing about your loss and I still can’t believe that I lost you. We used to live a beautiful, dignified life; full of life —joy, laughter, kindness, and everything that nurtures the soul. We loved each other and lived for one another. We shared everything together. We were a happy family living in a warm home always filled with our laughter and our many voices. But the occupation did not want this house to stay as it was.

October 7, 2023, came, and since that day, this house was no longer the same; this house and our lives changed forever. It became filled with fear, anxiety, sadness, and insecurity — all the things that human beings should never experience. We were in a state of extreme terror, hiding in our home and hugging each other. The nights were especially harsh, as the bombings and attacks increased. Our nights passed in agony, waiting for the morning so we could sleep a little, only to wake up frightened by new bombings — like in a torture chamber.

To ease our fear, we would gather with my father’s family, eat together, talk, laugh sometimes, and be fearful other times. This continued for several days and weeks, until the day that our lives were turned upside down. The occupation struck again, this time with only one intention: to erase our family from all memories of our beautiful country’s history. We know that this occupation is cruel, intentional in the most brutal of ways. Still, the brutality was hard to imagine.

The occupation bombed our house with random multiple shellings. Like all human beings, we just did not know what to do. We saw death in each other’s eyes. We ran out of our home, fleeing from death, not taking anything with us. We left everything behind: the house where we had lived for many years, our memories, and our dreams. We went to a place where we didn’t know what awaited us. We didn’t know that death awaited us there!

We lived for two days in the new foreign and scary place, as we tried to adjust and do the best out of a horrible unthinkable conditions — conditionsonly my people, the Palestinians, are expected to live under. We tried hard to adjust and stay alive. My family and I sat listening to the news, and the news said there was a ceasefire between the two parties, lasting a week. We couldn’t contain our joy. We couldn’t sleep from the happiness. We were waiting for the ceasefire to come.

Midnight arrived, and the occupation went crazy, bombing randomly and intensifying fire strikes. They were very close to us. We could hear the sounds of shrapnel falling to the ground. We gathered in the living room, hugging each other. I was sitting next to my brother, who was hugging me and reassuring me that everything would be okay. I was very afraid, sensing that something bad was going to happen to us. My father called my older sister and asked her to bring him a glass of water. She gave him the water, and he drank it. Then he fell to the ground. We couldn’t comprehend what had happened.

We screamed and rushed to check on him. He had been hit by shrapnel from the occupation, and blood covered him. We didn’t know what to do. We cried, screamed, and called for help, but no one came. We tried to contact an ambulance, but the occupation had cut off communications and signals. I was very afraid and distanced myself from them because of the terror I felt from the scene. I sat in a corner, crying and screaming. My brother came to me, hugged me, and told me to come to his side. He said, “I can’t bear to lose anyone else.” I didn’t know that I would lose him too, and that this would be the last time I would touch my dear brother. I loved him so much.

We had no other choice but to take my father to the hospital ourselves, under constant danger. We clung to any hope that my father was still alive. My brother carried my father on his back and placed him in the car; my mother went with them. My sisters and I stayed behind, waiting for them to return and hoping to hear that my father was okay, that he was only slightly injured. The morning came, and we waited for their return, but no one came back, and we received no news. We later learned that they went to a hospital, but the hospital refused to take them, so they had to go to another hospital. On their way there, the occupation targeted them with a missile, directly hitting their car.

My father and brother were killed, and my mother was severely injured in her brain, spine, and other parts of her body. She was taken to the hospital, and she became our only hope of survival. We prayed for her to recover and return to us, as she was all we had left. But God willed for her to rest from this life, and He took her pure soul to heaven.

A year has passed since their deaths, and the war continues, unrelenting! For all of your passing, it still feels like an elephant has fallen! I still can’t believe that I lost my mother, father, and brother forever. I will never see them again. I will not laugh with them. I will not live with them. I still don’t know how I will continue living without them. It’s like falling from a cliff towards an alternative world where no one will be able to find me. But I will live on with their memories and their love for me. I will love you forever, and I will always be proud to be your daughter.

To the world, a loss of life is one life too many, as the saying goes in English. For my people, the Palestinians, the occupation can take our lives, our dignity every second, every minute, and at all times. We are in a daily horror. It is not one life that is lost in each Palestinian home, it is many lives too many!