Every time I try to grasp the idea that he won’t return, I feel a burning pain, like trying to stare directly into the sun.

When the city around us was under siege, my friends and I would escape into a video world.

I have traveled a very long road to reach my goal of dual bachelor’s degrees in translation and education.

Listening to my students, I feel as though I am standing between their childhoods and the war, trying to help them build a bridge towards hope.

I try to scrub your absence from my skin / but you were the sunlight, noor.

Even though the bombs stopped on paper, life in Gaza remains a struggle for the basics of survival.

For my friend, every step of the wedding ritual was recreated despite the losses and the constraints imposed by war.

You were / The sigh of an orange tree / The hymn of faith, and love, and joy.

Al-Baqa Café provided respite from the war until Israel targeted it and turned it into a scene of carnage.

Even as I am overwhelmed by this war, I still long to hope, to bring happiness to others, and to make things a little more normal.

‘Inside me, it felt like someone had shut off all the light,’ Abeer told me. ‘That was when I met Fidaa Hijazi.’

My friend did not get to graduate, become a pharmacist, or complete her novel about life under siege.