we are not numbers
emerging writers from Palestine tell their stories and advocate for their human rights
The war claimed member after member of Kawthar Abdalhadi’s family.
Kawthar Abdalhadi holds her son’s hand as he lies in a coma at the European Hospital. Photo: Raneem Abdalrahim Abdalhadi
When I was a child, before the war came and stole everything, I used to run to my Aunt Kawthar’s house every Eid. I waited for the Eidya and the sweets she handed out with her warm hands. I was like her fourth daughter.
In that same house lived Adham, who I grew up believing was my older brother. He was loved by his sisters and always very kind to his mother. He was the eldest son and the only brother of little Kareem. But Adham didn’t see Kareem as just a brother. He saw him as his son.
One of the things I loved about Adham was his quiet, beautiful hobby. He collected old coins in a piggy bank. He used to say with a soft smile, “One day, these will be worth something precious.”
A few days before the war, I was at my grandmother’s house when I heard Adham’s footsteps coming. My heart jumped, and I ran to put on my hijab. When he saw me, he laughed and said, “Since when did little Raneem grow up and start covering her hair in front of me?”
On the night before he was targeted, our families gathered together. That night, he spoke about his dream of leaving, of building a future somewhere beyond Gaza, and choosing a life rather than having one forced upon him. I sat silently, my heart heavy, asking myself, Is there even a future left in Gaza anymore?
When hunger crept into every corner of Gaza, Adham worked at a small cart to help his family. One day, an elderly woman came to him looking for yeast so she could bake bread. He went back to his tent and told his mother, “I need yeast for my friend.”
It was almost impossible to find, and, when you did find it, it cost more than gold. But she gave him what little they had left.
After he was martyred, his mother learned the truth. It wasn’t a friend who needed the yeast. It was a stranger, an old woman he had never met before.
When I talked to my aunt about this story, she was crying. “Whenever he saw someone in need, he forgot himself completely. Even the little food we had during the hunger, he took it to others without a second thought.”
My aunt recalled another of Adham’s acts of kindness. One day, he saw a sick cat lying on the street. Everyone walked away, no one stopped. But Adham ran to it, lifted it gently in his arms, and carried it to the vet. He stayed there until he knew it would be fine.
In March 2024, Adham decided to go back home, to the house that his family had fled several days earlier. The occupation had given them no warning and no chance to grab anything. He went back just to find some clothes for his family.
The occupation targeted him in his own home. In his own home!
Adham had gone to get clothes. What kind of “precision” ends the life of a civilian carrying only a bag of clothes?
The afternoon the news reached us, the shouting shattered the peace we had been living in. I couldn’t comprehend that Adham, who had been laughing with us yesterday, who had been talking about his future, was now lying somewhere between life and death.
He spent 30 days in a coma at Gaza European Hospital.
The distance between where we’d been displaced to and the hospital was long, dangerous, and terrifying, but his mother, Kawthar, never stopped visiting. She took three very expensive buses each way. She wanted Adham to know, even in his coma, that his mother was there.
Thirty days later, on April 5, at six in the morning, my father’s phone rang. It was Adham’s doctor calling with the news we had been dreading: “Adham has been martyred.” We didn’t know how to tell Aunt Kawthar, her daughters, and Kareem.
Since that day, Kawther walks to his grave with the same tired feet, and the same tears that have never dried and will never stop falling.
I once heard her cry out that she wanted a journalist to carry her voice and her pain to the world. I never forgot those words, and I made a promise to myself that I would be part of making sure her voice was heard.
Today, Adham’s friends still knock on her door. They still come to sit with her and talk about him. They tell stories of how he never let any of them down, how he was always there. One of his friends got married and named his son Adham, so that his name would not disappear.
Luqman Anbar had traveled to many Arab countries, met many women, and seen many faces, but he found his heart in Linda, Kawthar’s daughter. He waited and waited until he could marry her.
They had only one beautiful year together. Then the war came.
On the first day, Linda fled south to her family, and Luqman stayed behind to fight in the north. But he never forgot her, not for a single moment. He sent secret messages through the siege, hidden words that crossed checkpoints and destruction: “I’m OK. I’m thinking of you…”
A part of Luqman’s letter to Linda. Photo by: Linda Anbar
On the night of November 11, 2024, Aunt Kawthar came to visit us. She had just returned from her son’s grave, and it was clear from her face that she had spent long hours there in tears. Suddenly her phone rang, and she heard the devastating news: “They assassinated Luqman in his home. He was martyred.”
My aunt rushed to her tent, to Linda, unable to believe what she had just heard.
What Linda only discovered later was that every single day that Luqman was fighting, he was putting away a gift for her, waiting for the war to end so he could give them to her.
The war never ended. Luqman was martyred. And all those gifts, all that love, died with him.
Palestinians gather as buses carrying released prisoners arrive in Khan Younis, October 13, 2025. Photo: Raneem Abdalrahim Abdalhadi
Diana, Aunt Kawthar’s other daughter, lived through a different kind of waiting. Her husband, Mohammed Abu Ouda, was arrested and spent two years in prison — two years with no letters, news, or sign of life. She didn’t know if he was alive or dead.
I could see her composure and strength. She started making ma’amoul to sell. I asked her once, “Why are you working? For the money?” She looked at me and said, “So I don’t remain a prisoner of my own memories.”
Two years later, on October 13, 2025, Mohammed returned as part of a prisoner exchange deal.
I climbed up to the roof and filmed the buses passing by and the people rushing toward them. I was thinking of Diana and that indescribable moment — when you see the one you love coming back to you.
Aunt Kawthar is still in Khan Younis, steadfast, but crying every day, scrolling through Adham’s photos on her phone.
