The author’s little brother Zaid. Photo by his teacher, taken before the war

 Once, Gaza’s nights were filled with soft golden lights, streets buzzing with laughter, markets alive with voices, the smell of food wafting from every corner and young men singing by the sea. It was the sound of life—of joy and hope. But that music has long been silenced.

For the past two years, happiness has been replaced by grief, celebrations by screams and laughter by the cries of the brokenhearted. Now, even breathing feels like a burden. I once stood by the window, letting sunlight touch my face, filling my lungs with air and hope. Today, the same air chokes me—thick with dust, smoke and the stench of gunpowder. The birds are silent. Only the haunting hum of drones remains, dragging fear into every waking moment.

Fear sits heavy in my chest, tightening with every blast, every scream. Every nerve is stretched thin, my skin soaking in panic. I once counted minutes to morning breakfasts shared with friends at the university. Now, I walk through ruins, blood staining the ground where laughter lived. Every broken wall, every shattered chair, a graveyard of memories. Today, I stand before all that’s been stolen—my home, my dreams, my Gaza.

It’s not just the missiles targeting us. We’ve been stripped of everything that gives life its meaning. Every basic necessity has become a weapon. Imagine waking up each day with a new fear of losing something you never thought you could. We never imagined losing our homes, or, for others, losing their entire families. We are all starving. There is no medicine, no transportation, no food—nothing. And now, we carry a single, collective trauma: What is left to lose? 

My little brother Zaid is ten years old. He was just eight when the war began. My mother constantly worries about him. “How can a child like him grow up healthy?” she asks. For nearly two years, his body hasn’t received a single nourishing meal. She’s terrified that even the slightest illness could become dangerous. “There’s no medicine,” she says. “No way to get help. No hospital to turn to.” And so, we live in fear—not just of what we’ve lost, but of what the future might still take from us. 

Despite everything, we clung to the fragile hope that school might offer Zaid a fleeting escape from the heavy shadows that haunted his young heart. One day, we made the decision to send him to a school built especially for children like him—not a tent like most schools had become after the original buildings were bombed and turned to rubble, but an actual solid structure, with a small courtyard outside that reminded him of his old school. A place where learning and play might momentarily drown out his fears. 

But one morning, as my mother was preparing him to leave for school, Zaid suddenly refused. “I don’t want to go,” he whispered. When she asked why, his answer shattered her heart: “What if I come back home and find out you were all killed in an Israeli strike—and I wasn’t with you? Will I be left all alone?”

Hearing those words, I was immediately transported back to his screams after the house next to ours was bombed, shortly after we fled from northern Gaza to the south. On the very first day of our displacement, the neighboring house was targeted, and my brother Mohammad was injured. How can a child ever forget those moments, even if the war ends?

Unforgettable goodbyes

Some wounds never heal—not with time, not with silence, not with strength. And among the many stories that carry these wounds is one I will never forget.

I remember clearly how happy Mohammad Krayra was the day before his daughter’s wedding. He was determined to find joy in his daughter’s wedding despite the harsh conditions. That morning, he went out to get falafel for his family’s breakfast. But while standing at the stall, an airstrike hit—and he was killed.

We didn’t survive. The ones who died…survived!

We, the so-called survivors, are dying every day—not just in spirit, but in flesh. Survival is the slowest kind of death.

The next day, his daughter (my friend) was getting married. She said, “My father is gone, and I carry two heartbreaks: the first is that he will never see me again, and the second is that he will not be with me at any moment in the days to come.”

Gaza’s weddings once rang with laughter, drums, and ululations that danced through the streets. But on her wedding day, there was no music—only mourning. Her white dress never left the closet. She wore black instead. Her father was meant to walk her to her new home. Instead she walked to his grave. 

Our deepest fear now isn’t the waiting, but the possibility of never seeing our loved ones again.

Because waiting in Gaza isn’t just about time—it’s about desperation. Zaid refuses to leave home, not because of school, but because he’s afraid of losing us—afraid he’ll come back and find we’re gone. And we fear the same. My father’s friend goes out every day, and his family lives in silent terror—not just of an explosion, but of the silence that follows. The silence of not knowing. The silence of never coming back. Like the family of the martyr Mohammad Krayra, who waited for him to return with breakfast—only to be crushed by the news of his death. In Gaza, even the smallest departure can feel final. Every moment, every breath, holds the weight of goodbye.

A night from hell

I remember the hardest moment of waiting my family endured. We had no food at home and the markets were empty. My brother Mohammad couldn’t handle hunger. He said he would walk the road of death to the distribution point of what the world misleadingly calls “aid.” My family begged him not to go, but he insisted. At 10 p.m., he set out on foot, walking over 15 kilometers to reach the distribution point. 

It was a night from hell. None of us slept. We kept hearing horrifying news, neighbors screaming as the bodies of their sons arrived in place of the flour they sought.

Our worry grew unbearable. We had no idea what had happened to Mohammad—until we heard a knock at the door.

I remember exactly how we felt. Thank God he came back alive, but something inside him had died. He had stood among the living corpses until 7 a.m., trying only to survive. He returned with nothing. No flour. No sugar.

My father told him, “We don’t want anything. Better for us to die together than to lose one of us for a bag of so-called aid.”

Does the world understand the cruelty of what it means to wait in Gaza?

War has robbed us—stolen our years, our childhood, our laughter. And after all that loss, can we ever truly go back? Mahmoud Darwish’s words echo with haunting truth: “When the war ends, nothing will ever be the same again—neither the world around us, nor the people we have become.” Many believed the war would end when the bombs fell silent, but the cruel reality is that the war truly begins in the silence that follows.

It starts when we are forced to live without those we love, when the absent outnumber the living. Homes may rise from rubble, but stolen childhoods remain lost forever, and broken souls carry wounds that time cannot heal. How can we ever return, when our dreams have been shattered and our spirits crushed?

Despite everything, my mother remains a quiet force holding us together. She hums lullabies at night, not just to soothe us, but as if trying to calm the skies themselves. She runs her fingers through our hair and whispers, “If only I could return you to my womb to shield you from all this.” Her voice trembles, but her hands stay steady. In her, I see a kind of love that refuses to die—even in a place where life itself has vanished.

This article is co-published with Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.