we are not numbers
emerging writers from Palestine tell their stories and advocate for their human rights
On my third trip to the city, everything felt different—strange, suffocating, and heavy.
The tents lined up along the road from Deir Al-Balah to Khan Younis. Photo: Samah Zaher Zaqout (all photos in this story were taken on October 26, 2025)
I’m writing this from a small café in Deir Al-Balah, central Gaza. We came here after leaving my grandfather’s house, the place where we’ve sheltered after losing our home and having nowhere left to return to. Leaving wasn’t simple; it took months of hesitation, fear, and sleepless thinking. We left not knowing if our decision was right or wrong.
Today, we live in a tent. After nearly two years of genocide, we were finally forced to move into the tent—a fate we thought we had escaped. I don’t want to write now about the road from the north to Deir Al-Balah, nor about the long nights of indecision that came before we left. I don’t even want to let my mind wander back there. I don’t want to continue remembering what I only hope to forget. I want to write about my trip further south, to Khan Younis. It was my third time ever visiting the city, even if nothing about it felt familiar.
My first visit to Khan Younis was years ago, for a cousin’s wedding. The second time was with my colleagues, to visit a friend who had just returned from Umrah (a pilgrimage to Mecca). The city had always seemed wide and open—its streets broader than those of Gaza City, its sea closer, its fields greener. But this third time, everything was different. Everything felt strange, suffocating, and heavy.
My father and I left Deir Al-Balah on foot, waiting for any car that could take us farther south. We walked for a long time, but there were no vehicles, not even the animal carts that have become Gaza’s main transportation since fuel almost disappeared. Gas and diesel are too expensive, if available at all. Many drivers have resorted to pouring cooking oil into their engines, even though it damages the motor.
Finally, we found a cart to take us halfway there. My father and I climbed on, sitting at the edge as it moved slowly along the dusty road.
Every time I ride in a car or a cart in Gaza these days, I feel like I’m watching a film, sad and endless, where I’m both the viewer and a character in it. I kept staring at people as we passed them: children carrying pots from charity kitchens that looked heavier than they were.
A thousand questions circled in my head as we moved forward. What grade is that boy in now? Did that little girl go to school this year? Have these kids ever tasted chicken, now a luxury few can afford? What did they do to deserve a life without parks, safety, or rest? And were those who left Gaza to secure a future for their children the ones who made the right decision, leaving their land?
Along the road, there were camps everywhere with tents packed tightly together, pitched on any piece of empty land people could find. Some rent tiny parcels, paying to set up their tents on land that isn’t theirs. But the majority of our people can’t afford this.
The “lucky” ones have a little space in front of their tent to build a small kitchen or a makeshift bathroom, while most go without these necessities. Tents are pressed up against each other, layer upon layer of heat and suffocation. Clothes hang from the corners of the tents and the air smells of smoke, dust, and sewage.
I was surprised to see many families pitching tents on small hills—dangerous, windy, and far from everything. But it makes sense, because those hills, I reckon, are free and almost no one can afford to rent space below.
Palestinian families in Gaza pitching their tents on small hills, October 26, 2025. Photo: Samah Zaher Zaqout
Of course, it didn’t used to be like this—the masses in the tents used to live in their own homes. Before the war against us, Gazans were people who loved life—able to carve out ways to work and earn just enough to live with dignity, even without formal jobs or degrees. But the war changed everything, and those same people can barely afford clean water, a loaf of bread, or a simple phone charge.
When we finally reached Khan Younis, we visited the crowded, noisy market. Yet I felt like a stranger there because everything was different.
When I last visited my friend, the streets were full of light, but today so much of the city has been destroyed. Even the farmland looked pale and lifeless. The supermarkets have been replaced by small street stalls run by people who work all day to earn just enough to feed their families.
Supermarkets-turned-stalls in Gaza. Photo: Samah Zaher Zaqout
Most of the stalls sell canned food, though some fruit, vegetables, and a bit of frozen chicken and meat had just recently started to appear. Others sell firewood because most families must still use it to cook. Some gas arrives as aid, but it doesn’t reach everyone, and what little is for sale is prohibitively expensive. Lighting a fire has become one of the most exhausting parts of our daily lives.
Firewood still being sold in Gaza for high prices. Photo: Samah Zaher Zaqout
We passed a clothing stall, really just a tent filled with clothes salvaged from bombed-out shops. They were dusty but beautiful, simultaneously showing ruin and survival.
Most clothing stores in Gaza have become like this stall. Photo: Samah Zaher Zaqout
Then we passed a small bakery that sold pizza and pastries. Across the street was a hospital, which has become rare to see still standing. I exchanged glances with an old woman outside in a wheelchair, her face covered and her whole body showing exhaustion. A young man made an angry exit. He said he’d been coming every day to pick up some medicine that had never arrived. And at the gate nearby, children sold things under the relentless sun.
Nothing in this trip lifted my heart. I had thought this visit might bring some air into my chest, but all I felt was heaviness, a weight that no words could ease. I kept thinking about what remains of Gaza City when we finally return. Everyone says it has changed beyond recognition after the latest forced displacement. What is left?
Even with the little aid that has finally come in, Gaza still bleeds. People are tired, broken, surviving on memory and faith alone. The wounds will stay deep inside us, and guilt will always creep in whenever we allow ourselves to feel joy.
Most people see Gaza through a camera lens, but living inside it, walking its roads, and smelling its air is something else entirely. It suffocates you in ways no photograph can show.
The only moment that made me smile that day was at the pastry shop. On the counter, I saw the long sesame ka’ak, the same kind Abu Kuweik used to sell in the mornings. Abu Kuweik was the most famous ka’ak seller in Gaza. Almost everyone in Gaza knew him. We used to buy ka’ak from him since we were children. I knew him when he was old and I think he had been selling ka’ak almost all of his life.
I hadn’t seen or tasted this bread of our childhood since the first days of the war. I think Abu Kuweik is dead now. I don’t know if it happened during the war or before. Seeing that bread again put me over the moon—a piece of the old Gaza, still warm, still alive somehow.
Our childhood bread, ka’ak, still available in Gaza. Photo: Samah Zaher Zaqout
A few minutes later, the baker brought out a tray of Turkish pastries! They were the ones I used to eat every morning at university, always with a cup of ayran (a yogurt drink). I laughed. For a precious moment, it felt like those days had returned, my friends and I sitting on the steps of our building, sharing stories and bites of that same pastry. The university is gone now, the building destroyed, and my friends are scattered. All that remains is that taste, a flavor that carries us back in time.
Turkish pastries made in Gaza. Photo: Samah Zaher Zaqout
My father ordered 15 pastries. We waited while a little boy, maybe in eighth grade, baked our bread, his small hands moving quickly over the fire. When we bit in, it was absolutely delicious.
I don’t know how long these tiny details will keep bringing me joy, even if it is mixed with the ache of longing for a past I may never get back. But I’m certain of one thing: all that was destroyed still lives within us, in our memories, in our imagination, in our fragile yet bold hope that tomorrow might, somehow, be better.
