One year has passed since I lost Ameera.

What can I say about her that will separate Ameera from the thousands of others who have been killed in this Israeli war on Gaza? She was not, and never will be, just a number to me.

Ameera was just 26 when her life was stolen from her, yet she played such a large role in our family. Before we were married, my husband Mohammed talked about his family to introduce them to me, and he mentioned Ameera the most. He shared his innermost thoughts with her, and she was the first he told when he decided I was the one.

I assumed that Ameera was older than him, wiser. But she was three years younger.  It was the same with her mother and four younger sisters. She was their friend and guide as well. Ameera’s mother wasn’t well educated, so she served as her mom’s “interpreter.” And when she became a nurse, her father envisioned her as their caretaker when they became old.

Every time I talk to my mother-in-law now, I sense her struggle to concentrate, to maintain some interest in this life. She still spends her days crying and the nights searching for her daughter in dreams and shadows.

How cruel the life of Gazans is! How can mothers be expected to cope with the murder of their children? This is a pain I now fear as a new mother.  It’s a unique agony you don’t really know until you give birth yourself.

Ameera and her husband were forced to evacuate their home — their dream house, under construction for three years and not yet complete — almost immediately on October 7, 2023, since they lived not far from the border with Israel. Due to Islamic restrictions on the mixing of unrelated men and women, the two had to split up. He went to his aunt’s home and Ameera moved to her parents’ house, along with their two boys, Hamza (2) and Omar (almost 6 months). She was displaced twice more but then decided to return to her own house.

I beseeched her not to, but she seemed relaxed. She said the suffering of displacement was worse than the fear of what might happen; she’d rather face her destiny at home, with her husband and children.

And so, it came to be. On the 12th of November 2023, we lost Ameera.

My own family had just been evacuated from the North two days previously, sheltering at one of the UNRWA schools. There were mounds of garbage, crowded toilets, and long lines for water. My mother fasted so she would not need the toilet during the day. To give my mom a little relief, I decided to take her for a few hours to my house, which had not yet been destroyed. If we went early in the morning (when we believed the chance of an attack was less, due to a shift change among the soldiers and helicopter captains), we could take a shower and have a little privacy. I am not sure it was really less risky at that hour, but many people hoped it was true, revisiting their houses, then rushing back to the schools once again.

On the morning of the 12th, our party included my husband Mohammed, my mother, my two sisters with their kids, and my own two children. We walked in the street, trying to hurry as much as we could.

We arrived at our house around 7 a.m. At 7:12 (the exact time is seared into my brain), Mohammed received a text from Ameera’s phone, but from her husband. Call me urgently, he said.

Mohammed called back in hurry; we knew such a message could only be bad news.

“Ameera was martyred,” her husband said. That’s all he could manage.

What we learned later was this:

A missile hit their area early in the morning, while Ameera was in the kitchen making tea for the two of them and milk for Hamza. Hamza stood near the door of the kitchen waiting for his milk, while baby Omar was in the bedroom. The missile landed outside, next to their kitchen, and the fragments flew into the house, along with sand and broken glass. Ameera shouted to her husband (also named Mohammed), asking him to come to Hamza. He had been feeding their chickens and some ducks in their garden but immediately came inside.  He didn’t expect the worst; he thought she was OK, since Ameera had shouted. When he entered the kitchen, she stood as if frozen in place, without a drop of blood on her clothes. Hamza’s shirt was white with flour. In the bedroom, Omar cried, covered with dust and broken glass.

But then Ameera collapsed. Mohammed covered her with a blanket from the bed, told his younger brother to watch the kids, then rushed Ameera to the hospital in his car. There, she was pronounced dead. The doctor doesn’t know what caused her death; there was no outward sign. But Mohammed refused an autopsy. It was a gift, in a way: Unlike so many casualties of the war, Ameer was just as beautiful in death as she was in life. And that’s the way he wanted to remember her.

For us, everything was a blur after we got the news: My husband’s rage and tears, my pleas for information. Then the silence.

Ameera’s last conversation, I was told, was with her sisters, on the phone. She said she missed my two children, little Orjwan and Nizar, and was waiting for a ceasefire — even a temporary one — so she could see them again.

I saw her in a dream a few months after she was killed. She smiled and asked me to take care of her little Omar. It was a blessing; I see it as a message that she is in a better place.

When my little Orjwan asks me about her Aunt Ameera, I say that she was too good to live in this evil world. She deserved a better life in Jannah (paradise).

International solidarity activists talk about protecting our homeland. But must we lose everything in exchange for that ideal?

People post videos and photos on social media platforms. They wear a keffiyeh, or maybe watermelon earrings. Raise victory fingers.

But how can I stand for my homeland when entire families are targeted, my kids are starving, and my memories are buried under the rubble of my house?

Is the memory of a homeland worth more than my child’s life or wellbeing?

I can sing and dance the dabka while calling for resistance when I am fighting with an army. But this is not a war between two armies. This is a war between a Merkava and an infant, a drone and a toddler, a sniper and a woman, and a helicopter and an elderly person!

After about 400 days of genocide, I realize that my family and my people are what matters, more than a piece of land. Only when the world sees that Palestinians’ lives matter will it take serious steps to end this genocide.