A walk in the Gaza Strip no longer brings comfort; it deepens the pain. Photo: Samah Zaher Zaqout

On January 15, 2025, I sat with my nine-member family in a dimly lit room in northern Gaza, the last place we took shelter after a year and two months of endless displacement, waiting for the ceasefire to be announced.

That room wasn’t our first haven, but it was our last. After more than 12 displacements, that room became the place where our exhaustion finally rested, though that rest was quickly broken.

The news started flooding in—dozens of updates every minute. It looked like the ceasefire was imminent. The proposal had finally been agreed to. It seemed our relatives in the south might actually return, and we might see them in person, not just through glitchy phone calls that barely lasted a few minutes.

We were all gathered, struggling to connect to the internet, refreshing pages constantly, and flipping through news channels to figure out what was happening. My brother hooked the TV up to the battery we’d charged in the morning, and we all sat together, waiting.

I don’t know how to describe that waiting. It wasn’t joyful, nor was it sad.

How could we feel joy after everything that had happened? After all the fatalities, the casualties, the demolished homes, the orphaned children, the widows, the bodies still unburied, the exhaustion, and the endless displacement?

And how could we feel sorrow either, when this was what we had been hoping for all along? A break. A breath.

It was stifling. Yes, we were relieved that the “war” might pause, happy that we might see our loved ones again, but our minds were overwhelmed with questions: Where would we go now? The owners of the house we were sheltering in would return from the south, but our home had been reduced to rubble. And even if we found shelter, was the “war” really over? Or was it just the quiet before another storm?

Still, we waited, breath caught, hearts beating fast, for that one word to be announced.

Finally! It’s announced. Quietly, I broke into tears. My father was sitting there, completely mentally and physically exhausted, thinking, what are we going to do? Was it really over? And even if it was, what came next? The “war” may have paused but it had already built a monstrous aftermath, and we all had to face it.

All we hoped for was a breath, a pause from all this pain, just enough to feel like we’re actually living, rather than surviving day after day. We are stuck in the day this “war” began; we haven’t aged since then, yet we’ve aged by centuries.

He survived one Nakba, but not this one

All days feel the same. Every day, that passes without life, without meaning, and without the smallest achievement, steals a piece of our time and energy until we feel that we’ve grown old, not because of age, but because we’ve run out of energy, because our life has become lifeless.

Every birthday in Gaza feels like a lie. “Don’t count this year,” we usually say.

We’ve come to dream of a single word, a word that might end this torment, stop the displacement, silence the bombs, and let food in. A word that brings back meaning to our days.

Yes, a ceasefire was announced, but pain didn’t pause for long. It came rushing back as if Gaza and suffering were soulmates, cursed never to be apart.

This feeling of living without meaning can literally kill. My grandfather died during this “war,” in March 2024. He passed away because he couldn’t bear living a life stripped of meaning. He couldn’t endure the endless displacement. He couldn’t handle being away from his home and his room.

During the war, when he was still in his home, he was doing better. Every time we had to evacuate, he refused, until my uncle finally told him that the area was going to be invaded and everyone had to leave. Only then did he leave with the rest.

My grandfather was a gentleman, kind-hearted, and soft-spoken. He used to write riddles for us and smile as we tried to solve them. He always had a box of cake to hand out whenever we visited. One day, we made pastries. He kept walking by, smiling at us as we worked. When I handed him one, he laughed and prayed for me. He was gathering us close.

What truly made him special was how deeply connected he was to his home, his room, his neighborhood, and his people. My grandmother and uncle said the same thing when he died: He couldn’t cope with leaving his home because, to him, life had lost its meaning. His days had lost their soul and with every passing day his health deteriorated. This lifeless existence took its toll on him, both emotionally and physically, weakening his body until he was gone.

He had lived through the first Nakba, but this “war,” our second Nakba, was the one he could not survive.

A life without meaning is a slow death

Soon after the ceasefire began, “war” returned. Bombings echoed again. Fear crept back.

I am seven wars old; I have been displaced 12 times since October 2023. I’ve seen my home destroyed twice—first in 2008 when I was just a child, and again in November 2023. It was the same apartment, the same tower in the pretty Al-Karama neighborhood where I had spent the last decade building a life.

In Gaza, everything can change in the blink of an eye and one’s whole life can turn upside down.

We were sitting in our home when, suddenly, the evacuation orders came. My family scrambled together what we could and ran. Our first stop was a wedding hall—dark, cold, and silent. I felt like it reflected our reality. We spent two hours there, just waiting. Then, a missile flattened our neighborhood.

We fled, again and again. To my grandfather’s house. To the Al-Nuseirat camp in central Gaza. Back to the north. Another wave of displacement: fleeing airstrikes in Beit Lahia, sheltering in Jabalia refugee camp, escaping again after the IDF invaded. The rhythm of my life has become cyclical: Run, return, grieve, run again.

Israel’s aid blockade, now stretching into its fourth month, has made food scarce, and the constant worry of living in a war zone has more than taken its toll.

Three weeks after the ceasefire, a taxi drove us to visit my aunt who had just returned from the south. She was taking shelter in Jabalia camp, my childhood place. As usual, in the car, I chose to sit by the backseat window. I was stunned when my dad pointed and said, “This is Shadia Abu Ghazaleh School.”

That’s Shadia School? My school?

The streets around it were nothing but rubble and reeked of sewage. The school itself was partly demolished, and classrooms were packed with displaced families. Every window was covered with clothes. In the schoolyard, little kids played barefoot.

Then we reached Jabalia camp. All the way there I hadn’t recognized a single street. I was lost in the place where I grew up. Even the breeze coming through the window felt strange. This wasn’t the Gaza I know. They have turned my land into a wasteland, into a place I can’t recognize.

In Gaza, most schools have turned into shelters, surrounded by dozens of tents. Photo: Samah Zaher Zaqout

The streets that were once alive with traffic, lights, restaurants, cafés, libraries, and buildings are now all reduced to rubble. They’ve turned into tents and dust. All the structures are gone, but the deeper devastation lies in people.

Even the way we walk has changed; it has become slower and heavier. This “war” has deprived us of our casual gaits, because even this has become too much to bear. Walking doesn’t bring us comfort anymore; it only deepens the pain. Every step reminds us of what we’ve lost.

Home, as I once knew it, no longer exists. In every place I enter, every street I walk, I see people living in tents; I see barefoot children begging in the streets. I see people crowding just to get their plates filled from Tekkeih, the hub of charity food distribution. I live with a persistent paradox: I have never felt more rooted in Gaza, or more alienated from it.

Belonging beyond the rubble

Belonging, for me, isn’t just about geography. It’s emotional, generational, and spiritual. It lives in memory. It lives in the small things: the taste of Ramadan Iftars shared with family, the smells of falafel wafting from street corners, the sound of children cheering on Eid, the beeping cars at 8 a.m., the students rushing off to schools and universities, the Qur’an verses played in cars while people are heading to their work, and the walk to the sea.

“War” has fractured all of this. I can no longer visit relatives to celebrate Ramadan nor enjoy its Iftars. Food consists  mostly of dry goods and tinned beans. We are back to cooking over open fires, searching for flour and mixing it with substitutes. Children no longer cheer; no cars beep. Instead, the buzzing of drones roars endlessly overhead. All schools have been turned into shelters. And electricity, which before the war was shaky at the best of times, is now nonexistent. Light comes from solar chargers, and internet access must be booked in advance. People are jobless, there’s no safe beach to walk to, and all bakeries have been closed.

Yet despite the devastation, Gaza is the home that raised me, educated me, and taught me patience. But belonging to a place I don’t recognize is a specific kind of grief. I don’t feel like I belong to this destruction. But I still belong to Gaza.

Last Ramadan, I went out with my brother to buy a few things. The streets were dim and lifeless. But then we saw a group of children that had decided to play that old Ramadan game we all used to play. They lit a piece of wire and started twirling it, making glowing circles of fire in the air.

Palestinian children in Gaza make glowing circles of fire in the air, playing the usual Ramadan game. Photo: Samah Zaher Zaqout

Eid followed. Our neighbor insisted on frying more falafel than usual, hoping people would come and buy them because it was still Eid. Even if that falafel was made from lentils and fried over a wood fire, we still try to remember what life looked like before the “war” stole it all away. He had set up his stall right beside his partially demolished home.

For me, and many like me, belonging is not just about place. It is about memory and identity. Even when that place is crumbling, when its streets have turned to rubble and its skyline is unrecognizable, the bonds remain. But they are now bonds of mourning as much as of pride.

In a “war” that has displaced over 90% of Gaza’s population, the concept of belonging is being redrawn—not as a certainty, but as something fragile, something fought for every day. For me, it means continuing to speak, to teach, and to remember; to insist that Gaza is more than its ruins.

And in that insistence, even through loss, we find our way back to belonging.