Colors often inspire primal emotions. When an object is vibrant yellow, for example, it evokes feelings of warmth and cheer.
As a person who loves painting, I appreciate color and all the hues it comes in. Painting has been my refuge other world in which I express myself as I want and that has allowed me to escape from the reality of the world by colors, fantasy, and random beauty.

I used to keep the paintings I made because they represented a memory of my life. Whenever I looked at them, I felt the effort and the time it took me to paint them. Each painting was different in accuracy and beauty from the other. Each painting was more perfected than the one before it — as if I was shooting an animated video to record these attempts, as if I was a doctor and these paintings were my patient.
I hung my paintings all over the house so I could look at them every day as if I were in a museum and to remind myself of all the good work I had done. But I never expected to leave them and leave my house to escape from death.
Everything has become dull
This war is the beginning of the end. It swallowed Gaza like a tsunami. It didn’t leave a house standing or a street intact but destroyed all of it.
I remember the last time I closed my eyes to sleep in my warm house and woke up in it, but then I opened my eyes in a far place, a place that was not my house, on a thin mattress that hurt my back as if it was not satisfied enough with seeing me hurt.
I don’t see bright colors anymore and everything has become dull. Everything has become cold and gray. With every step I take, I see destroyed houses, and their color has been smeared with the dark shades of burnt remains until it completely hides them.
I began running away from blackness and destruction by looking at the sky. If the occupation has destroyed the ground, it will not hold the sky by its fist. It will not be able to smear its beautiful blue color that is decorated with white clouds and once the clouds move away from each other, part of the sun appears as if it is avoiding looking at our miserable faces.
I began to lose my health even though I am young in my early twenties. Sometimes I feel pain in my back and joints. I remember when I used to look at the elderly individuals trying hard to stand and sit, but the difference between me and them is that some of them were athletic at my age.
My immunity is no longer as it used to be. In the past, whenever I got sick, I healed the same day. My body used to resist any intruder with its full power.
Now, the simplest disease like the flu destroys me and weakens my bones. All this because the occupation controls the flowing of food and other goods and destroyed the agricultural lands that we used to depend on. But now we depend for most of our nutrition on canned food that are filled with preservatives and other materials that I do not want to know about.
Sometimes I sit and think to myself, “When will all this end? Will I live until that moment when I hear people’s cries, whistling voices in the streets, and the screams of children declaring that the war is over?”
What is the point now of painting?

I miss sitting in a chair in front of my empty white canvas while the sunlight is reflecting on it. Using my colors the way I want to and mixing them in a way that suits the painting. Holding that brush that I love among other brushes, moving it slowly on the painting and sitting for hours while listening to my favorite song by Firuz, “يا عاقد الحاجبين على الجبين اللجين.” (“O you who furrow your eyebrows on your soft forehead”). I love this song because my name, Lujain, is mentioned in the song and my father used to listen to it in front of me when I was a child.
But now there is a war! Even if I found a canvas and some colors and brushes, what is the point of using them? I used to paint what I feel, but the sadness that lies inside me cannot be painted. And the beautiful scenery that I used to draw is no longer there. I only see destruction and ash everywhere.
To try to paint now, I would only be deceiving myself. It’s very depressing to see myself losing even my passion for painting. I no longer have any ideas or even enough energy for it. I miss the view of the beautiful colors intertwined everywhere and the appearance of the sea while I was standing in front of it. I see it and notice my love for it as it shows off its white waves accompanied by a soft calming sound that makes me want to sleep.
I look at the night sky adorned by its bright stars trying to steal the light from the moon with its rounded shape and charming illumination. I watch the moon covered by those dark holes to add their mysterious touches. Before the war I didn’t imagine that Gaza was so beautiful after dark.
After the war destroyed most of Gaza, I looked at photos I had taken before the war began. While looking at those pictures, I realized that Gaza was beautiful because of its simplicity. It did not have mountains and scenery like what we see in other countries and there are not many monuments. Some of these landmarks were controlled by the occupation forces and most of them were hidden and destroyed, but it still retains that magical touch and picturesque greenery adorned by colorful red roses.

I remember when I was attending school and, on my way to classes, I passed by many houses with beautiful gardens. Lemon and orange trees were sneaking out from behind the fences as if they were trying to steal my attention to their beauty; their refreshing smell followed me all the way to school.
It was tempting for the feisty little ones, who would sneak into the yard to steal from its fruits. Most of the owners of those houses were witnesses of the theft, yet they felt proud of themselves when they saw them eating from their trees.
What a tragedy! I’m just hanging on to memories. I only talk about the past. I know that when I get out of Gaza to escape the war, I will see many roses and stunning views in another country, but those views will be a scene of the past no more.
Every happy moment I might experience will become a scene like a memory that I am so attached to. What worries me is coexistence if I ever move elsewhere. What will be my reaction when I am in another country and I don’t hear the sound of the occupation drones bothering me? How will I feel if I heard a loud voice of someone crashing the door, or the sound of the car garage being closed or opened? All those sounds remind me of the frightening rockets launched by the occupation forces. Each one had a different terrible sound.
I draw nothing

It seems that I will never heal. I am a victim of the war. I’m just a temporary survivor but I’m not alive.
This war is not over yet, and I am still on the verge of death, but I am only temporarily surviving. Anyone who survives after 200 days of a war is considered somehow a survivor.
I am now sitting in front of an antique canvas and vintage colors in a house that is not my house. It is only one of those houses that I escaped to while trying to reduce the possibility of getting bombed and ending up as human pieces scattered throughout the area.
In front of me are those old colors but I am not painting anything. I am just looking at the white empty canvas, but I draw nothing.
The same scene happens now in my house that I ran away from and left several months ago. My painting remains on its wood stand and with scattered colors, but no one sits in front of it. I’m sure that sunlight is still reflected on it, and I imagine my favorite song is still playing, “ياعاقد الحاجبين علىالجبين اللجين.”