Hello World! Yes, I am still here. I am not sure about being alive or not. Logically, as long as I am writing this, I am alive, but mentally and spiritually, I may not be.

At the same time everyone in this world is moving forward, 2 million people in Gaza are moving backward, and I am one of the 2 million. Before October 2023, I was extremely satisfied with my job and extremely happy with my small family, which had turned even more joyful after I gave birth to my little daughter just 6 months before the most tragic Israeli war started.

Although I am a wife and mother, I used to also be a passionate working woman looking forward to making a successful career with a record full of achievements and achieving a satisfying social and financial status. Everything changed when Israel announced its decision to launch a bloody war on the Gaza Strip. Since then, neither me nor anyone in Gaza have been able to live a normal day as ever before.

Over the past five months, I have been enduring fear, insecurity, death, hunger, loss of dreams, and displacement. I wake up every day with a fake smile drawn on my face, trying to persuade myself that everything that is happening is just a nightmare and this nightmare will inevitably come to an end, and then I will return to my work and I will get a higher position. I will reunite with my mother, whom I long to hug warmly and breathe her unique smell. I will sit with my father again and have a long conversation with him about life and experiences. And to push myself on, I avoid thinking of how my life no longer looks like a normal human being’s life.

This blood-soaked war has not only affected my personality, mentality, work, and health, but also my motherhood. Once this unparalleled war started, I began feeling guilty for having my daughter, wondering if it was a good decision to bring a baby into this unjust world and forcing her to live under occupation, injustice, and insecurity.

My baby is now 12 months old. Her name is Lya and she has spent 155 days of her life in fear, evacuation, and starvation. I know she is so young and she might be unaware of what is happening around her, but I am sure she feels everything.

Since Lya was born, I was longing to see her grow bigger so I could make for her tasty fruits, smashed vegetables, and pancakes. Yet, due to the severe blockade imposed on the north of Gaza, specifically since October 2023, I can barely find rice and bread to feed her.

Nonetheless you can consider Lya one of the luckiest amongst Gaza children, as her father and I managed to store some milk and biscuits for her since the first days of the war. However, this did not last for too long. In this context, thousands of infants have been deprived of milk and cereal for a couple of months, causing them malnutrition and illnesses.

The majority of Gaza families were forced to run away from death and destruction and flee to the South of the Strip. They were deceived by the Israeli army that it would be “safer.” My family insisted that they would never leave their house — until the Israeli army became so close to them and made clear its intention of invading Al-Shifa hospital, west of Gaza City; my family home is a few meters away from the hospital. Thus there  were no solutions available to them but to seek a safe shelter in Khan Younis, in the southern part of the Gaza Strip.

As Israel does not know the true meaning of safety, by December 2023 it announced its serious desire to start its military operations in Khan Younis, and my family was again obligated to leave the city, searching for another “safe” place in Rafah. They ended up in a tent, near the Egyptian border, along with tens of thousands of families displaced from their houses.

On the other hand, my husband Mohammed, our little baby Lya, and I were unable to leave Gaza City for many reasons, but most importantly because of our understanding that there was nowhere safe to go. Since then, we have been suffering both fear and starvation like the rest of the approximately half a million Palestinians besieged in the north of the Strip.

At the end of December 2022, we were forced to leave the house because the Israeli tanks were approaching our neighborhood. We stayed out of our home about 40 days, and when we came back following the Israeli withdrawal from the neighborhood, we were surprised by the new horrible version of my lovely house. From beauty and calmness, it completely turned into mess and darkness.

Having nowhere to go, Mohammed and I chose one room to live in. We covered its destroyed window with a dusty curtain and moved our stuff into it, turning it into both our sleeping and living room. The rest of the house’s rooms are uninhabitable and the place, which used to be safe and warm, has become so cold and insecure.

My heart was full of hope that before the holy month of Ramadan arrived, a ceasefire would be declared, allowing the displaced citizens to go back to their houses so that family visits and gatherings, group Iftars, and all of the Ramadan vibes could be revived. Nevertheless, the Israeli warplanes continue to hover, the Israeli targeting never stops, the starvation is getting wider, and the suffering is going deeper.

Please keep us in your prayers.