Salem Omar Abu Ghali working on the coding for his game. Caption. Photo: Heleena Darwish

In No Safe Street, a simple web‑based video game created by my brother Salem Omar Abu Ghali, death is an ever‑present possibility. He built it to simulate the constant threat of displacement in Gaza, where survival can be a matter of meters or seconds — those few moments that decide whether a person lives or dies.

Through this digital game, my brother has attempted to document one of our most traumatic experiences: repeated forced displacement. It is modest in its design, yet it carries the details of the displacement we went through in our search for safety in a place that has never truly been safe.

Salem studied programming for two years at the University College of Applied Sciences, but he was unable to complete his education because of the war and everything we endured.

Our ordeal began when our father, who was a teacher, was killed while we were trying to flee to a nearby school under continuous, indiscriminate bombardment.

It was the night the Israeli army entered Khan Younis. We believed the school would be a safe refuge where we could shelter until the shelling stopped. But only minutes after we arrived, we lost our father. A piece of shrapnel struck and pierced his heart in the schoolyard, and all our sense of safety was shattered. How can someone who was running from death end up dying?

After that, our journey of displacement began. We were forced to move from one place to another multiple times until we reached what was called the “safe passage”—a passage that carried nothing of its name, only humiliation and fear. We moved across different areas within Khan Younis before eventually settling in Al‑Mawasi, where we began building tents and trying to adapt to a new reality. That was not our first displacement; it was roughly the third.

After five months, the army withdrew from Khan Younis, and we returned to our home. But we did not stay long; we were ordered to evacuate once again. This cycle of displacement kept repeating, and each time we faced danger and barely survived.

The idea of the game was born from this life.

Salem wanted to document this experience of flight and seeking survival. Despite limited resources, frequent power outages, and unstable internet access, he never stopped working. He would go to cafés with electricity and internet and spend long hours developing his game.

The game captures those intense moments that only those who have lived through them can truly understand: the sudden warning, the moment you freeze in place, unsure which direction to take, and the moment you run through rubble while dust fills your lungs, just like in real life.

No Safe Street’s instructions are simple: “Cross broken streets and find shelter before the next strike.”

Salem did not create a game for entertainment or for players to win. He designed it as a reflection of reality, allowing the world to feel the bitterness of loss we live with every day. In his game, loss may appear as nothing more than a black screen reading “Game Over,” but in reality, it has meant entire lives coming to an end.

Salem’s development of this game also proves that our minds are still capable of creativity despite all the obstacles.

Although he has not yet completed his university education, he succeeded in developing a game that documents the story of an entire generation that has come to see survival as the greatest achievement at the end of each day, and every morning as the beginning of a new phase of displacement and danger.

In Gaza, distances are measured in the seconds remaining before everything — your home, your father, your child, your mother, even you — becomes a target of airstrikes or gunfire. They are measured by your ability to escape the “red zone” drawn on a map that represents your entire city.

With its simple programming and modest graphics, the game may seem far removed from the complexity of global video games, but that is precisely its essence. It reflects the life imposed on 2 million people in Gaza, where survival depends on how quickly you respond to a sudden warning and your ability to run through rubble and destruction.

And often, you don’t survive; you are targeted simply because you could not run far enough in a single moment with your children.

Play No Safe Street.