My students in the schoolyard at Halab School, before the war. Photo: Ohood Nassar

Since my childhood, I have dreamed of becoming a teacher—one who teaches her students not only lessons, but also dreams, life, and — because of where I live — patience.

In mid-2023, before the war on Gaza erupted, I needed to fulfill my university’s graduation requirement to complete a teaching practicum. I did not hesitate for a moment on where I would do it. I chose Halab School, affiliated with UNRWA, the same school where I had studied in fourth and fifth grade, located only a few hundred meters from my home.

On my first day at the school, it felt entirely different. For the very first time, I was standing there as a teacher, not as a student. Memories flooded my heart — my school days, my childhood, and the love my teachers had given me. 

I greeted the teacher under whose supervision I would train. She looked at me and said, “You will become an outstanding teacher. I can see the passion and desire in your eyes.”

I smiled, thanked her, and began my first day as a trainee teacher.

I grew to love all my students deeply. I waited eagerly for each training day just to see them and embrace them. During the morning assembly, whenever they saw me, they would run to hug me and tell me that the days they spent at school without me were not beautiful — that they loved me. I listened to them with love and saw myself in them, remembering how I used to say the same words to my favorite teachers.

The days passed, with my time as a trainee teacher being filled with beautiful and joyful moments. But, in Gaza, we have learned that carefree moments of happiness never last long.

On October 7, I was at home preparing for my day as usual, following my favorite routine as a university student and trainee teacher, when the sound of missiles stopped everything. I froze in place. I already knew that sound. A new war was about to begin, one that would take everything, just like the wars I had lived through since childhood.

I stayed home, overwhelmed by fear, asking myself endless questions: What will happen next? Will we survive as we did before? Will my dream be completed, or has the war ended it? There were no answers.

October 5, 2023, was the last day I stood in Halab School as a teacher.

My home and school are located in northern Gaza, in Jabalia, an area classified during the war as a red zone. A red zone means that this is a place where anyone would be killed.

During the war, through the unbearable moments that my family and I and all the people of Gaza endured, I escaped reality by clinging to memories of the beautiful days before the war. I remembered myself as a student, as a teacher, and my warm, loving home that I had had to leave behind. Those memories eased my daily pain; they were like oxygen that kept me alive.

After the announcement of a temporary ceasefire in early January 2025, I was able to return to my partially destroyed home and my school. On the first day, I saw my house, damaged, surrounded by rubble and shattered glass, and smelled the scent of gunpowder. All the houses in the neighborhood were destroyed, and the streets were barely walkable due to debris and broken glass.

We cleaned and fixed up what was left of the house. Two weeks later, I decided to visit Halab School to check on relatives whose homes had been destroyed and who had taken shelter there, as the school had become the only place they could stay.

I was shocked and heartbroken when I saw the school. It had partly burned down and thousands of displaced families were sheltering in what remained and in the courtyard. Mothers were lighting fires to cook food in the area once reserved for morning assembly. Children were playing or helping their mothers cook, instead of learning their lessons.

I thought that seeing my burned school turned into a shelter would be the hardest moment.

In March 2025, the war resumed. Bombardment occurred daily near my home and school, as pressure mounted for us to leave and flee south. We were certain that if we left, returning would become an impossible dream.

In mid-May, the occupation forces warned us that our damaged home would be bombed within minutes. I said goodbye quickly, knowing with certainty that this was the last time I would ever see my home. And indeed, minutes later, it was bombed and turned into rubble.

That month, all residents in the surrounding area were forcibly displaced. The area was once again declared extremely dangerous. Schools that had been turned into shelters were evacuated, and the displaced were forced to flee south.

Finally, in October 2025, a ceasefire was announced. I felt immense joy and believed I would finally return to see once more at least the rubble of my home and my school.  But the occupation remains stationed near what is left of my home. and my school has been turned into a military base where occupation soldiers gather.

I once believed that seeing my home partially destroyed and my school partly burned down was the hardest thing I would ever endure. I was wrong. 

Now, I can’t even go back to them.

This is how the occupation always is. It deprives us of living our lives normally, turning return to even the rubble of our homes and burned down schools into an unreachable dream.