I’m an aunt to four beautiful little girls. Each one is a world of her own — different in every way. Each has her own tiny battles, fragile thoughts, and ways of protecting themselves. I thought I knew them, really knew them.

But war has a way of revealing how little we truly understand.

Before, these children were full of life — endless energy, love, and joy. But this war — it’s shattered their innocence, crushed their spirits, and wrapped them in chains of fear.

As their youngest aunt, I’ve been the one to listen to their worries, their fears, and their dreams. I ignore my own because theirs matter more. I wish I could hold them close, keep them safe from the world, give them the life they deserve. But I can’t. And I fear they will grow up with scars so deep that no love could ever heal them.

Somehow, in the midst of all this destruction, we’ve grown closer. It’s the only silver lining this war has offered.

If I had the power, I’d erase every painful memory, leaving only the warmth, the laughter. But I don’t have the magic. So, I sit with them, listening to their stories, stunned by their wisdom, the way they try to make sense of a world that makes no sense at all. They don’t realize how much comfort they give me at a time when peace is so hard to find.

Making sense of their world

One night, little Sila, just five years old, looked up at the sky through a shattered window and whispered, “The drone is winking at me.” She thought it was a star, blinking in the night. In her innocent mind, a flickering drone meant rain — rain that brought bombs, not life. How could I explain the truth to her? That the drone wasn’t winking at us with love, but with death. It wasn’t a friend; it was the enemy, watching us, waiting to strike.

Sila believes her father is the strongest man in the world, that no harm can come to her as long as he’s near. She thinks her mother’s arms can shield her from everything, that if she hides well enough, the bombs won’t find her. She’s five, but she carries the weight of someone far older.

Then there’s Fofa. Her biggest mission in life is teaching every child she meets about the importance of boycotting. One day, while I was scrolling through my phone, an ad for a popular snack appeared, a luxury in times of scarcity. Fofa, who’s also five, understood something many adults can’t grasp — that these companies support the ones killing us. She told her friend, “We don’t eat Nutella or drink Coca-Cola because they help in killing us.”

Fofa, like thousands of other children, has lost her home. She didn’t even get to say goodbye to her playroom or take her favorite doll or pink butterfly dress. All she has left is the key to a door that no longer exists, a key that now symbolizes loss, displacement, and homelessness. She couldn’t save her doll, buried beneath the rubble, and the thought of it makes her cry every night.

She keeps asking about her friends, wondering if they’re okay. We lie to her, telling her what we wish were true — that they’re safe. She also worries about her teacher, about the bus driver who used to take her to kindergarten, the school she had just started going to a month before the war reduced it to ashes.

Eila, Sila, Fofa, and Siba have invented a heartbreaking game. They bury water bottles in the sand. If the bottle stays intact when they dig it up, it represents a martyr. A damaged bottle means a martyr in pieces. The size of the bottle matters too — a small one is a child, a large one an adult. This is their childhood, a world filled with symbols of death, while children elsewhere run free in parks, untouched by the darkness we live in.

One day, Elia, who’s seven and sharp as a blade, asked me, “Is it the same plane that feeds us, killing us?” when she saw my neighborhood’s children chasing a humanitarian plane to get a morsel of food, chanting “drop, drop.”

Minutes before we were forced to evacuate, she suggested we dismantle our house’s walls and carry them with us, so no matter where we went, we’d always have home. And the flowers — she begged us to take care of them, flowers my father planted just before the war broke out. But they withered, just like our spirits.

Siba, my bright little star, was the first to ask my father what evacuation meant. Trying to shield her from the horror, he told her it was a journey to Mecca. She packed her bag, excited for a trip that wasn’t real, asking every day when we’d leave.

I’m also an aunt to a wonderful boy, our youngest, who will turn two next month. His name is Jawed, which means “noble horse” in Arabic or, as we called him, “the sugar of war.” His innocent smile, etched upon his face, has the power to strip us of our horrors. When the explosions hit, I could hear his little heart pounding in his chest. He called the sound of bombs “ghosts” and begged his sisters to protect him from ghosts.

They deserve what all children deserve

All children deserve the simple right to live, to grow up without fear. What did Tala Abo Ajwa, just ten years old, do to deserve being killed as she played with her pink roller skates? What crime did Hind Rajab commit to die alone, hungry, and scared? What was Abdul Rahman Qasim guilty of to be killed while wearing his blue roller skates?

While children around the world start a new school year, happy and safe, Gazan children wait in long lines for food and water, their schools turned into shelters. Instead of singing and studying, they are learning how to survive.

This is the story of all Gaza’s children. They witness horrors that no child should ever see. They become experts of all types of rockets just by listening to explosions around them. I read that UNICEF has declared Gaza to be the worst place to be a child, a place where children are born to die. Here, their lives can end in a blink — killed, tortured, burnt alive, buried under rubble, or orphaned.

Humanity has failed them. Innocence never stood a chance.

My nieces’ powers

My nieces love to watch a cartoon series called the Powerpuff Girls. The characters have superpowers to change the world. This is how I see my nieces, too: full of strength, resilience, and the power to transform their surroundings, no matter how difficult things get.

What truly inspires me to call them Powerpuff Girls is their unbreakable spirit — their ability to hold onto life and to make sense of a world that seems so senseless. These girls are the hidden force that keeps us moving forward. Their smiles and playful antics are a powerful reminder that we all deserve to live fully, not just survive.

The ongoing genocide has forced them to face challenges they had never imagined, like worrying about whether the water supply will last or if it will run out. They navigate an endless maze but give their all to find a way out. They’ve had to give up their favorite foods or snacks, either because they’re unavailable or unaffordable. Despite paying countless prices just to be alive, they confront all this horror with a sense of humor.

Learning from my nieces

These dark times have shown me my own strength — strength l never knew I had. I’ve faced my fears, pursued my dreams the hardest, and fought against the injustice we’re forced to live through.

I keep my anger pent up, so that I can keep moving forward; giving up isn’t an option for me even if in genocide. Instead, my determination to make progress and make a change in my people’s lives grows on me. As a medical student working to complete my degree, I couldn’t just sit back and wait, seeing my people suffering, groaning with each breath. I am doing my utmost to finish my studies as soon as possible.

I promised myself and family: I will keep trying till my last breath. And I’ve done it all with these children by my side, these little girls and this little boy who’ve lost so much, yet continue to find ways to smile.