we are not numbers
emerging writers from Palestine tell their stories and advocate for their human rights
How can an entire city become ‘past’? How can it be written so simply, as if it had never been a living place, filled with people?
My father and I attempting to construct a new tent, by hand, after our previous one became uninhabitable. Photo: Malak Herzallah
One bleak morning, my father and I stood on a patch of sandy land in Al-Mawasi, trying to tighten ropes and fix wood into the exhausted ground. While the ground defied us, the wind shoved us; it felt as though the elements were conspiring to defeat our mission. Then again, maybe the elements were on our side; maybe they also believed a permanent structure wasn’t necessary, maybe they also thought our tent life would be fleeting.
After some time, we paused for a moment to observe our small, shaking tent. My father’s silence spoke volumes. A shared but unspoken fear clawed at our conviction: Was this temporary solution becoming permanent?
In Gaza, months after the “ceasefire” was announced, people are beginning to lose hope of returning to their homes and neighborhoods. As hardship grows daily, it is no longer an option to wait for something — anything — to change.
Our tent where my family has been living since our displacement from Rafah. Photo: Hassan Herzallah
People are reluctantly adjusting to displacement, navigating the destruction forced upon them, while hopes of return sway like tent poles in the sand.
Since the Israeli occupation dropped those menacing evacuation orders, I have been living in a camp, alongside more than 20 other families who were also displaced from Rafah.
In the months following the ceasefire announcement of October 2025, we kept telling ourselves, “It’s almost over, we’ll go back soon.” Even though we know our neighborhoods have been completely destroyed, this belief made us postpone everything from fixing our tents to considering any alternative.
In the camp, this belief was shared by everyone. Families from the same neighborhood in Rafah would sit together, talking about the streets, houses, and places they once knew. We would redraw Rafah through our conversations, as if trying to keep it alive within us. No one spoke about staying here, only about when we would go back. But the Rafah we heard about was mostly rubble and destroyed neighborhoods.
Our days began to sag under the weight of the unknown, like a pool of rainwater accumulating at the center of a tarp roof.
In May, I was sitting in a small cafeteria by the sea, simply to escape the tent. I was staring at the water absentmindedly, when I received a notification from a friend, in which he described Rafah in the past tense.
I kept reading the sentence as my brain failed to make sense of it. How can an entire city become “past”? How can it be written so simply, as if it had never been a living place, filled with people? As if my old neighborhood, the neighbors talking on rooftops at night, the desk in my room, my old bed, the tree I planted in our garden, and the apartment buildings glowing in the dark had never existed at all.
My world seemed to be collapsing in on itself, like one of these wretched tents in a storm. I returned to our place in silence.
Our street in Rafah photographed two days before we were forced to leave our home. Photo: Ameer Abu Lebda
The six of us lived in a single space, separated only by a piece of fabric, which did nothing to block sound or offer privacy. At night, our breaths blended together. During the day, each of us tried to claim a small space for ourselves.
During the winter, the rain began to find its way in. It slipped through the fabric, gathered in the corners, and dripped onto the floor. Still, we did nothing to truly improve the situation. We were convinced we would return soon, so why exhaust ourselves?
In late March, strong winds hit. We woke up to find part of the tent had collapsed. My father was trying to fix what he could when I suddenly said, “No need, Dad, this is going to take a long time. Let’s take this tent down and set up a new one.”
His disbelief was obvious. I had always been the one telling him we would go back soon or that we would at least find an apartment to rent somewhere. But the truth was different.
There were no affordable apartments. The apartment we had considered was near the Yellow Line, where Israeli occupation forces are stationed. Reaching it felt no less dangerous than trying to survive in the tent.
My father did not argue. Instead, he asked me to go and buy the materials. I went out with my friends and bought tarp, wood, metal, and nails, totaling more than $600. We returned late, so we decided to begin work the next day.
That night, no one really slept.
My younger sister was excited. My brother was planning his place. My other sister remained silent.
My father tried to lighten the mood, joking, “We had a big house and were planning to build Hassan his own apartment, and now we’re happy about a tent.”
We laughed just long enough to forget where we were.
A month before the genocide, we had bought new furniture for my room. My father planned to prepare my apartment by the time I finished university. I am soon to graduate.
The next day, we began setting up. A neighbor came by: “Why now? You’ve been saying you will go back, all this time.”
I didn’t answer.
After hours of work, we finally finished. It wasn’t perfect, but it was better than the previous one.
We divided the new tent into two parts. I tried to joke with my father, “Alright, this side is my new apartment.”
He smiled, but his eyes gave him away.
Later, as my mother arranged our things, she said quietly, “I had hoped the first thing I would prepare for you, Hassan, would be your apartment in Rafah, not a tent.” It was a simple sentence, but it carried the grief of a mother whose hopes for her son had been cast aside.
Today, the tent stands. But the difference between living somewhere and surviving there remains clear.
As for Rafah, it has not disappeared. It lives on in memory, in conversations, in the small details we try to hold.
But we no longer know when we will return.
And perhaps that is the hardest part: not that we lost the home, but that we are beginning to learn how to live without it.
The key to my old room in Rafah, one of the few things I carried with me during displacement. Photo: Hassan Herzallah
This year, Nakba Day arrived while I was living inside a tent. What we once heard through the stories of our grandparents, who were forcibly displaced by the Israeli occupation from their homes and villages in 1948, now unfolds around us in real time. In Palestine, the Nakba is not confined to history; it continues through repeated displacement and loss and the struggle to hold on.
Between the Rafah we carry within us and the tent we struggle to keep standing against the wind, the meaning of the Nakba feels different now. Home is no longer just a place we can return to, but rather a memory we try to keep alive despite everything around us.
My mind turned to the key to my room in Rafah, which I still carry with me. The cold metal no longer opens any doors, but it remains as proof of a place I once lived and a symbol of resistance to the past tense.
This article is co-published with Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.
