Friday food being prepared by mothers. Photo: Alaa Mahdi Kudaih

In Palestine, in the Gaza Strip, Friday is a special day. Not only because it is a sacred day or because it’s the only day we don’t have school, but because it’s a triple celebration: a time for prayer, for coming together with relatives, and for reconnecting with the broader community.

On Fridays, around 8 a.m., mothers wake up early. You can hear the soft rustling of brooms brushing floors, the clinking of plates being washed, and the low hum of the radio playing Surah Al Kahf. Even in your sleep you can hear those sacred verses vibrating through the walls, like a calm heartbeat reminding you that today is different.

Around 9 or 10 a.m., the rest of us — the ones who are not the mothers — wake up to the smell of breakfast: fresh bread warming under a cloth, olives, cheese, hummus, tea steeping with mint leaves, and sometimes beans simmering in a pot.

Breakfast is the reunion of everyone who belongs to us. Uncles, cousins, grandparents all gather in front of our homes. We bring our chairs outside, form circles in the sun, and greet each other with sleepy smiles. Children run barefoot on the warm concrete; someone plays with the neighbor’s cat; someone sneaks a piece of bread before everyone sits. The air carries the scent of oud incense mixed with bread, dust, and sea breeze.

Before noon, men begin preparing for Friday prayer. They shower, iron their clothes, comb their hair, and splash cologne on their wrists. When they leave, the house gets quieter. That’s when the women begin preparing lunch, talking, laughing, and sharing stories while peeling vegetables or kneading dough. 

Around 11:30 a.m., the ice cream man passes by. Well, not exactly ice cream: Gazan Barrad, a lemon-flavored slush. The sound of his bell is enough to pull us out of whatever we’re doing. Kids sprint into the street, money is shuffled out of pockets, and everyone buys for everyone. I can’t remember a single Friday where I bought one only for myself. That would feel wrong; Fridays make you generous without thinking. 

Lemon slush ice cream. Photo: Alaa Mahdi Kudaih

When the men return from prayer, they change clothes and sit down for lunch. On Friday, nobody eats alone. If anyone is spotted fixing a plate only for themselves, a neighbor will knock on their door and insist they come eat with everyone else.

Lunch is rich and warm and full of life: makluba, rice and vegetables layered with chicken and flipped upside down, steaming as the pot is lifted; Gazan fattah, bread softened by broth and garlic, soaked until it almost melts; kabsa, long-grain rice glowing with spice and scattered with tender meat; and biryani, fragrant with cardamom, its yellow and white rice streaked with saffron.

Since I left Gaza in 2018, everything feels different.

In Turkey and Belgium, Friday is just Friday — a day like any other. People walk fast, streets are as quiet as on any normal day, and no one notices the absence of something sacred. Sometimes I have work, or classes, or appointments, things that never existed on a Palestinian Friday.

I miss those mornings when the world felt slow and full of meaning; miss waking up to the sound of my mom in the kitchen and my cousin calling my name from her window, asking what we’re eating today. I miss the noise.

I miss most of all the way the whole day felt suspended outside of time, as if the world beyond our street didn’t exist. 

But being away has made my memory greedy. It doesn’t stop at Fridays. It wanders.

Watching a lightning storm. Photo: Alaa Mahdi Kudaih

I miss the nights on the balcony in summer, sleeping outside because there was no electricity for the AC. The sky was our ceiling; the stars were our lamp. I miss staying up with my uncles and aunts in their gardens, playing cards and laughing until our stomachs hurt, cooking makluba at midnight or suddenly deciding to barbecue at 2 a.m. I miss dragging our mattresses to the terrace, lying under the cool night breeze, and listening to my uncle’s magical speeches about life and the world.

My uncles and aunts: They are the funniest, strongest people I know. 

Now, all our homes are destroyed. I did not see it happen with my own eyes. I saw it through a shaky phone video my cousin sent at dawn. Later, I saw it again on the news. I try to match the broken buildings on my screen to the map in my head: here was our doorway, here the fig tree, here the corner where we dragged our mattresses every summer. It feels unreal, like watching a stranger’s city collapse.

A garden in Gaza before the war. Photo: Alaa Mahdi Kudaih

And what breaks my heart the most is not just the destruction itself, but the question that keeps looping in my head: Where will we make new memories now?

Sometimes it feels like all those memories aren’t real, like they belonged to someone else. Being abroad for almost seven years, not seeing my family for more than three, has softened the edges of everything. On video calls, I look at them and feel the distance pressing between us. I can see their mouths move, but I can’t reach them. Faces blur. Voices arrive late. Even love feels delayed. It’s like trying to hold water in my hands: something precious, always slipping through.

I hate screens. I hate how cold and flat they make the people I love. I want to hug them, smell them, sit beside them while we eat breakfast outside. I want to hear their voices without lag, without breaks, without the silence that comes when the connection drops. I want to exist with them, not behind a glass rectangle.

I miss us.

I miss who we were before the world changed.