When I walk down Omar Al-Mokhtar Street — a long street and a bustling market in the Old City of Gaza — I see the sadness and exhaustion in the people.

In the middle of this war, the market is the only place where Gazans gather to find whatever food might be available during this long famine. Or they go to look for clothes and other necessities. But scarcity and high prices frustrate them, as well as the war.

Even if there is no food, vegetables, fruit, or meat, people still go to the market, and I ask myself why. Maybe it is to make sure that there is still nothing in the market. Maybe it is the one place where people can be together.

Now, the market is like a mirror reflecting their souls. Each time I go there, I wish that I had a supernatural power to shield myself from their feelings.

If you were in my place, you would be able to perceive what they are feeling and what they have felt, what they think about, what they desire, and what happened to them in this war as though you were reading their emotions from a book or a novel. How they live and what they are feeling are readable on their faces and in the way they hold their shoulders, and their weariness walks along with them like a shadow.

You would see the dark-blue ocean of sadness in their eyes, and you would hear the beating of their broken hearts with every step you take. You would hear their inner voices echoing with memories of being with the families and friends who have since died, and a feeling their martyrs still live among them. Whispered conversations linger in their minds, and you would hear these lost voices as you walked everywhere in Gaza.

You could encounter a man without his legs, a girl without her legs, and a child without his eyes. You would see the injured held in their kin’s arms, and the blood that has been spilled in the streets.

You would find AL-Ma’amadani Hospital on your left as you walk along Al-Saha, and the sound of the patients’ cries would rise to the sky, and the sounds of their anguish could break the clouds.

A man is recounting to his friends where and when he found his daughter’s body after she was killed in an Israeli bombardment. He mentions how beautiful and smart his daughter was, how much she loved life, and how she was excited to put something new in her pink bedroom.

In the market, conversations would drift around you.

“I don’t know where my mother is until now.”

“I found only her head.”

“What are you talking about, man! He is dead? Where and when?”

“I knew my son by his teeth.”

“I knew my husband by his finger.”

“They destroyed my home and burned it.”

“I’m so hungry, Mama.”

Despite all this, in listening to other conversations, you might think that the war could end tomorrow. People remain optimistic, even with the war and the heavy bombardment that falls all the time and everywhere in Gaza. Maybe there will be a ceasefire soon. Maybe the nightmare will soon end.

They wait to be reunited with their loved ones who are in southern Gaza now. How can hours separate people from the same town, within the same borders, between north and south, without any chance to meet?

Every time, when I walk this long street, navigating between the rubble of fallen buildings, I wonder, how is it that we became numbers in the nightly news? How can the world forget us? How can they tally the numbers of martyrs in each neighborhood or camp in Gaza without mentioning our names, our stories, talents, tales, and dreams?

How have we been buried beneath the ground while people around the world don’t know that before this war we woke up each day, full of energy to go to the university or to work? They don’t know how we collected books and novels from library shelves, or how we were preoccupied with our studies, and how we delighted in choosing cakes for birthday parties, enjoying time with family and friends.

How many children have been killed while they were playing games in the street with their friends? How many stories of love have been ended by a missile? How many wives have lost their husbands, how many girls want their fathers to kiss them? How many mothers want to hug their young sons? And how many people longed to travel to see the world but are now in graves?

Each day that this war continues, more lives are lost. All of this should end so that all of us may live. As my teacher Refaat Al-Areer wrote in his powerful poem,

If I must die
You must live
To tell my story