Photo: Shahd Alnaouq

I tremble each time
a table of food
appears before me,
a shadow whispering

this could be the last.
I tremble when my tongue
tastes a dish
I never liked, yet suddenly

it blooms with flavor
as if Death himself
wants me to savor
what I have long denied,

an apology between my lips
and the world before
the curtain falls.
I tremble each time

my smile rises
at each sip of water,
at each echo
of children’s laughter,

of strangers’ voices
threading through
our dim and broken street,
in dreamlike gratitude.

Then the sting comes.
I hate sleep, I hate peace—
both stood helplessly
while war stole them

from me,
from my people,
and left unending days
full of goodbyes.

Photo: Shahd Alnaouq

Shahd’s explication of the photos:

Cinnamon rolls: I took this photo on June 3, 2024, the day my cousin reached us after a full year apart. She and all of my mother’s family were in the south while we were in the middle, and the road between us had been closed for so long. That afternoon, the checkpoints opened for a short window, just enough for her to come and see us. Behind the frame and behind the cinnamon rolls there were tears, relief, and the ache of knowing she would leave again with no idea when the next meeting might come.

We made these cinnamon rolls together under the sky, with the sound of drones above us and the constant noise of ambulances rushing in and out of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital only a few meters away. Still, we tried to create a small moment of peace.

Scene of destruction: I captured this photo three days after making the cinnamon rolls, three days after we were laughing in the yard and trying to hold onto something soft. Without warning, our neighbor’s home was targeted and the blast reached us. In that moment we saw death close enough to touch, yet for reasons I still cannot understand, we survived.

I stood here, looking at the rubble, just after we learned Abdulaziz was gone. He was 17, my brother’s childhood friend, the kind of friend who grows with you like a second limb, who shares schoolbags, secrets, summers, and becomes part of the house the way sunlight settles into its corners. An hour before him, they had already pulled out his older brother Mundher, 23, and his sister Tehani, 16. Abdulaziz was the only one found breathing under the ruins and I was there when they carried him out. We all believed he would make it.

But one hour later his breath stopped and the hope with it.

It was one of the hardest days of my life. Nothing prepares you to see someone you love look into the face of a friend they grew up with and understand the story has ended.