we are not numbers
emerging writers from Palestine tell their stories and advocate for their human rights
With only two more exams between students and their bright futures, war changed everything.
Two important exams awaited me on Oct. 7, 2023. Photo: Mohammed Weam Al-Ta’ban
It was 6 p.m. I was walking home from a math class at the beginning of Tawjihi, my final year of school. Along the way, my mind drifted across the doorstep of the next chapter in my life. I had imagined the moment throughout my childhood: joy erupting in my house as I announced my final exam results, and then decisions to be made about universities and majors.
Feelings of excitement bubbled up from deep inside—I was on the verge of seeing a dream come true after so much hard work.
My friends were walking alongside me, sharing their own hopes and plans, each one drawing a vision for his future. We were so close, but not quite there. I tripped over a small stone by the roadside and snapped back to reality. Two important exams awaited me the next day. It was the evening of October 6, 2023.
That night, everyone was busy: some preparing for university exams, others planning to buy new clothes, and some worried about job interviews. We went to sleep thinking about our usual, everyday concerns.
The alarm clock sounded different. Exams were canceled. Schools and universities were suspended. The smell of gunpowder filled the air, and we turned on the radio and checked our phones for news about what was happening. We watched our future collapse before our very eyes as Gaza turned red with fire.
The war escalated soon after the bombing began. None of us expected to see the morning of October 8. We were being attacked relentlessly from sky, land, and sea. The borders were sealed and two weeks later, Gaza was invaded. It wasn’t the first time there was a siege imposed against us, but this was by far the most suffocating.
We Tawjihi students, recently full of dreams and ambitions, suddenly had to shift our focus to survival. Simply staying alive became a daily battle. Our academic achievements were buried in the rubble—we woke up early not to study, but to find a spot in the food line. We fought for bags of flour and buckets of water.
When we were students, we found rare moments of escape from the pressure of our studies but as the genocide escalated we were literally escaping death, moment by moment.
The occupation tightened its grip, the bombings intensified, and evacuation orders rained down together with the bombs. Aid was blocked and suffering multiplied in a never-ending struggle. People fled death only to meet it elsewhere.
At the end of each day, a different kind of battle remained: the battle within. I found that an important part of these internal spaces was remembering who I once was, and that my past held dreams and ambitions. I had to remind myself to never give up and to keep hope alive, no matter how long the night.
Longing for the classroom. Photo: Mohammed Weam Al-Ta’ban
After nearly 500 days of genocide, a flicker of hope appeared soon after the new year of 2025. Calm returned with the ceasefire. There were no planes, no explosions. Life began to creep back into our broken lands along the sea. Our Tawjihi exams were rescheduled, and our dreams returned: We were finally able to imagine a future again. It was time to think about recovering and rebuilding.
But our dreams were extinguished quickly when the sound of rockets shook us from our sleep. The explosions ripped across the Gaza Strip, but I kept telling myself that these couldn’t be rockets because there was a ceasefire. A friend called to check in on me and confirmed what I already knew but didn’t want to believe: the war was back.
Everything we had lived through over the past year and a half was about to repeat itself. There hadn’t been time for us to begin to heal. I no longer knew what remained untouched by Israeli strikes. But I vowed that they wouldn’t destroy my hope, promising myself to keep fighting for it.
After a year and a half of war, and a few days of false peace, my survival was not just from death, but through hope. In every line I stood in, in every second I endured, I survived with my dream. I have carried this dream with me every step along the way; it accompanied me when displaced, and was there with me each time I faced death.
We Palestinians will never give up on our dreams, no matter how hard the world around us tries to break them. These dreams are alive—they survive because of us as we survive because of them.
