On July 24, 2014, I came so close to death that I smelled it. Israeli Occupation Forces bombed our neighbor’s house, which was vacant at the time, though we didn’t know that. When we heard the “warning” bomb hit the roof, we did not know which house was going to be targeted, so my family (19 members) and I descended to the lowest floor of our home, assuming it was the safest place to be. The explosion that followed was so massive that it destroyed our neighbor’s house and blew inward the walls of our house, killing both my parents, two of my older brothers, and my three-year-old nephew. Others were severely injured.

It took me more than three months to recover from the injuries I sustained and for my body to function properly, especially the left side of my body, which took most of the hit. I suffered a severe head injury, two broken ribs, and so many cuts and bruises. I received more than 60 stitches and staying in the hospital for three days.

That was nine years, two months, and 13 days before October 7, 2023, when our lives were turned upside down once more.

On November 21, 2023, Israel bombed a house 50 meters away from mine. Two hours later, they bombed another one in the same block. Fearing for our lives, my family and I left our house for the first time. We lived in a three-story building: My brother Mahmoud and his family lived on the ground floor, my family and I lived on the first floor, and my late brother’s wife and four sons lived on the second floor.

My sister-in-law and her sons took refuge at her parents’ house. Mahmoud, his wife, and son took refuge at my sister Elham’s house. I took my family to stay at the store my wife’s brother had rented to start a small business. We split up to ensure that if some of us were to be killed in a bombing, at least others would stay behind to carry the family’s name.

A desperate search

My family and I stayed at the store for 37 days. I would wake up at 2 a.m. to walk 2 kilometers to the nearest working bakery and stand in line for it to open at 7 a.m. to get some bread. Then, I would stand in line again to get water from the nearest mosque. Then, I would search for wood to make a fire to cook food or heat water to bathe my kids.

One day around 3 p.m., while my wife was napping, I went to the mosque to pray and Mohammed followed me. When he couldn’t find me, he chased after cats (he loves cats) till he got lost! When I returned, I asked my wife about him. She said she woke up and couldn’t find him, so she assumed he was with me.  I ran out and searched for him for seven hours with the help of some neighbors. I shared his description, which was broadcasted through the speakers of every mosque in the area. When it got dark, and it was no longer safe to stay in the streets, my neighbors pulled me back to the store to continue the search in the morning.

I couldn’t sleep or eat that night, with every thought in the world flooding my head. How could I, not knowing where my son was? He was wearing a white T-shirt and black shorts. He was barefoot on roads full of rubble and glass shards.

I shared a message with popular Telegram accounts with my address and a photograph of my son. I also called the police and shared his descriptions. They assured me that he must be okay because no police stations or hospitals have reported receiving anyone with his description. But all this couldn’t ease my mind or my wife’s. I started talking to his picture on my phone. I went hysterical.

I dozed off in my seat after who knows how many hours I had spent talking to myself. As soon as the sun rose, I went out again and searched everywhere. I looked in every hospital, every mosque, every police station, and every school. But I could not find him.

I reached a breaking point, and I could no longer look my wife in the eyes, feeling responsible for losing him. They say desperate times call for desperate measures, so I set his photo as my home screen wallpaper and walked the streets, showing people my phone screen and asking them if they saw him. He had been missing for 15 hours at that point. I returned to my wife with tears in my eyes.

A few hours later, a man recognized my son in the photo and told me that a woman had taken him in and was searching for his family. He immediately gave me the woman’s address. I rushed, barely able to walk, so my neighbor accompanied me, fearing that I would pass out from not eating or sleeping well. When we reached the address, I found out that my father-in-law had gotten there first and had already picked him up. I started running like crazy toward them while my neighbor was trying to keep up behind me. Two kilometers took me five seconds! When I saw my son, I hugged and kissed him and cried — I cried a lot.

Those were the longest 23 hours I have ever lived in my 32 years of life.

The woman who found him, fed him, gave him warmer clothes, served him a large cup of milk, and gave him toys to play with until he slept. She said that he only asked about his brother Ibrahim, who was five years old then, and refused to say anything else.

I used to be a cat lover but after my son got lost chasing them, I grew resentful.

Two near-misses

A few days after that incident, my pregnant wife wasn’t feeling well, so I decided to take her to the hospital. I borrowed a children’s stroller, put Mohammed in it, and stood outside the house waiting for my wife and my son, Ibrahim. She wanted to pray before we left. I saw three rockets leveling a city block 150 meters away. I froze completely for a few moments, but when I felt rubble and shrapnel hitting us, I covered Mohammed with my body to protect him. Luckily, we weren’t hurt. The smoke was heavy, engulfing the area. Ibrahim and my wife screamed, thinking we had been killed in the explosion. If my wife hadn’t waited to pray before we left, we would have all been killed. Ninety people were massacred in that bombing.

A week or so after that, I went back to our home that we had fled to grab some stuff. My son Ibrahim insisted on coming along. I decided to take a different route than usual that was 15 minutes longer. When I arrived at our home, I heard a massive explosion as I put the key in the door. It was a bombing of a house located on the route that I would usually take. Should I have taken that route, considering the timing, we would have been killed.

Wretched water situation

There was barely any water to drink, so we drank whatever we could find — even if it was not safe to drink. I almost suffered acute kidney failure. My right kidney ached till I could no longer tolerate the pain. The hospitals were overcrowded with bodies and injured people and no one could find the time to help me. The pain kept getting worse, and I thought I would die or, at best, need kidney dialysis for the rest of my life.

My wife managed to get me some antibiotics and painkillers that helped ease the pain. It took me 24 hours to begin recovering.

I decided to leave the store and return to my home. I stayed home for quite some time even though we hadn’t had electricity or running water since the beginning of the war. My brother and I walked distances to get water we could use in the house — any small amount we could carry across the long way. Getting enough water to wash some clothes by hand, wash some dishes, or even shower every few days was a daily struggle. Yet, despite all the effort, we survived.

Homes destroyed

My sisters’ homes were all destroyed by Israel.

When the Indonesian hospital was hit, my sister Enas’s house was severely damaged as she lived nearby in Sheikh Zayed with her husband and eight children.

Israel bombed a tree garden near my sister Manal’s house. She was not there; she was staying with my brother Mahmoud, since her husband was traveling on October 7.

An artillery shell damaged my sister Elham’s house.

All three of my sisters and their families fled to the south of Gaza, which was presumably safer according to the Israeli occupation. My brother and I stayed behind.

When the humanitarian ceasefire was announced in November 2023, I took my son Ibrahim to see his kindergarten, since he anxiously asked about it. Sadly, it was destroyed, along with other homes and shops nearby. He was so shocked he cried all day. Every couple of days, he would ask me: “Why have they bombed my kindergarten? Where shall I go now? Where will I see my friends? Are they dead?” I didn’t have an answer to any of his questions.

I come from a large family in Northern Gaza. We lost so many because of Israel’s bombs: 10 were killed in an airstrike to a neighbor’s house, more than 90 were killed in an airstrike to a residential building, 60 were killed in an airstrike on my uncle’s home and his dairy factory. Most of my relatives are still under the rubble. No ambulance or civil defense vehicle can approach these sites because Israel targets them. I still can’t comprehend what happened to my family members, let alone mourn their loss.

The decision to leave home

On the night of December 5, 2023, five artillery shells hit my neighborhood. My brother and I waited till morning to inspect any damage to our house or that of our neighbors. We walked 500 meters when two F-16 rockets hit the only remaining mosque in my neighborhood; only one house stood between my home and the mosque. The smoke was heavy, and our wives and sons were home, so we panicked. Running in the street with a drone watching above is dangerous. But I could only think of my family, so I ran as quickly as possible, to find when things cleared that they were OK. The damage to my house and the houses nearby was massive. No one was killed or injured, though.

After a while, my brother said he couldn’t take it and left for the nearest school. The Israelis were shelling my neighborhood heavily, disregarding the lives of the people in the block they were hitting. I was home with my pregnant wife, Maram, and two sons. The shelling was so heavy that we couldn’t leave. All I could do was hug my family, huddle in the center of our apartment, and keep my composure. I didn’t have the luxury to break or panic; my family expected me to protect them.

It took about an hour — though it felt like a year — before the shelling finally stopped. I counted about 50 shells, each two seconds apart, along with heavy airstrikes. I could barely see my family due to the heavy smoke that descended. The smell of gunpowder filled our lungs.

After the air cleared, I was shocked at the damage caused to our neighbors’ houses. The rubble from their homes broke through our windows. I realized my house could no longer withstand another round of shelling, so I followed my brother to the UNRWA school where he was taking shelter. It was filled with thousands of people like me. Most lost their homes and sought refuge. More than 7,000 people — families, children, women, elderly, and those who were injured — all compact in an area designated for 1500 students at most. There was no drinkable water, not enough food, no cooking gas, no electricity, and not enough bathrooms.

Editor’s Note: This entry was written in the early summer of 2024. Since then, Ismail and his family have been displaced once more and have not been able to return to northern Gaza.