we are not numbers
emerging writers from Palestine tell their stories and advocate for their human rights
When we laugh in Gaza, it’s the kind of laughter that burns in our throats, hides our screams, and keeps us from unraveling.
The writer, who finds humor essential to the will to survive. Photo provided by Eman Eid
I no longer recognize my own laughter.
Laughter used to be something simple—a burst of joy when a friend told a joke; a warm sound that echoed off the kitchen walls while I talked with my mother as she stirred rice or washed dishes. Back then, laughter came from lightness.
Now, it comes from our will to survive.
In Gaza, laughter has morphed into something sharp, something that hurts. It arises not from joy, not from the bottom of our hearts, but from suffering and despair. It comes from living through things no one should have to endure—and then acting like everything is normal. After October 7, 2023, laughter began to catch in my throat to the point that sometimes it chokes me. This is laughter borne of trauma.
May 5, 2024, at exactly 3:34 a.m. An airstrike hit the building next to where we were living in Rafah. Three floors of our neighbor’s home collapse and crumble to the ground. My family and I were sleeping in the same room when it happened. It’s a moment I remember as if it happened yesterday.
A second before the blast, there was an eerie silence as we tried to understand what was happening. Then chaos. The blast shook everything. We woke up to the screaming of the neighbors as pieces of their building rained down, and dust from the blast filled the air, making it difficult to breathe. I could barely see my hands. The windows of the room shattered. We were terrified.
Amid this horror, my younger sister, her voice shaking with fear, managed to whisper, “What’s happening?”
“It’s just fireworks for Eman’s birthday,” my brother replied ironically. Even though we were in shock, we all laughed. My brother’s answer was funny because it actually was my birthday.
The next morning, I posted on social media a video of our room after the airstrike. The caption I gave it was “Three steps to adapt after an airstrike: First, wake up and shake off the stones from your back. Next, grab your mattress and blanket, dust them off, and carry them to another room. Finally, go back to sleep, honey.”
My friends, all of whom live in Gaza, reacted with laughter. They didn’t laugh because they thought what happened was funny. They laughed because they knew it was unbearable. All we can do is laugh.
Some of my friends commented, “Happy birthday!” Our situation was so absurd, it felt like it could not really have happened.
It was not a happy birthday. Everyone knew that. I celebrated my previous birthdays with a gathering of friends, gifts, a simple cake, and cool wishes for a happy life. This wasn’t that.
Gazans now have a sense of humor that can slice through the thick smoke of an airstrike. It’s that dark.
The sleeping room in Eman’s home, filled with dust and debris after a nearby airstrike on her birthday. Photo: Eman Eid
Before the war, if I was in a hurry, I would use my phone to call for a taxi and a few minutes later, an air-conditioned taxi would be waiting for me in front of my home. Now, we transport people the way we used to dispose of our trash—on donkeys.
Donkeys were once a symbol of poverty. Now they are almost our only means of transportation. Gas is scarce, diesel is expensive, roads are cratered, and cars are either too expensive to repair or simply gone. We make the best of it by ironically telling each other that Gaza has “gone green” or is switching to an “eco-friendly” form of transportation.
If we are lucky, we have the VIP experience and ride in a cart pulled by a horse—so much faster than a donkey. What makes the situation even more ridiculous is that people who can afford a donkey ride think they are living like kings.
One time, in Deir Al-Balah. I was sitting on a donkey cart that stopped so many times I wondered if I would ever arrive at my destination. We would stop if the donkey wanted to poop. We would stop if the donkey got tired and needed a rest. And, of course, we would stop to pick up more passengers. The driver of the cart couldn’t get enough of them.
At one point, someone I knew got on the cart. We looked at each other but didn’t say anything. We didn’t need to. We each knew what the other was thinking. We each knew the scene was ridiculous. We just looked at each other, shared a smirk, and laughed.
For the past year and a half, we have been waking up to the sound of drones instead of birds. We no longer check our phones for messages—we check them for lists of the dead. We don’t really sleep. People call this “the new normal.” We know there is nothing normal about it.
And then there are the ceasefires—the most fragile word in our vocabulary. We no longer take the negotiations seriously. They are pointless to the point of being funny. Whenever we hear about the start of a new round of negotiations, we often process it through dark humor. Even though we’re certain the talks are going to fail, when the talks collapse, we don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Once I was scrolling through Instagram and saw a post announcing a new round of negotiations. Curious, I checked the comments. The comment with the most laughter reactions was, “Cut off Osama Hamdan’s internet before he finds out about the new round of negotiations.” The comment was funny, because Hamdan, a senior Hamas official, always began his remarks about any new proposal with, “We will not accept…”
One day in the winter of 2025, my friend Tala and I took a walk along the coast near Deir Al-Balah. We walked until we reached Al-Qarara Port, a place between Deir Al-Balah and Khan Younis, where we could enjoy the sea without seeing the chaos of tents behind us and could experience the luxury of breathing fresh air without the smell of fire or missiles.
We sat on huge rocks by the beach, crying, laughing and sharing our daily struggles and broken dreams. As we spoke about death as an honorable way out of our situation, we suddenly both recognized the absurdity of fact that in Gaza you have to wait your turn for everything, even your death.
During moments of silence and daydreaming, as we searched for an escape from this world, we both came up with the idea of a nuclear bomb as the final solution to this never-ending tragedy. In a moment of ironic humor, we both said, “Just drop it and end this farce.”
We knew how awful that would be. We knew it would instantly wipe us out. That was our point. That is exactly what Israel is doing to us, only gradually, in cold blood under the watchful eyes of a blind and deaf world.
We don’t have a death wish. These are the kind of thoughts that pass through our brains after we’ve spent over a year and a half trying to stay alive in a world that keeps trying to erase us. We laugh, but it’s laughter that comes from hopelessness.
When we laugh in Gaza, it’s the kind of laughter that burns in our throats, hides our screams, and keeps us from unraveling. We are not careless. We are not naive. This is what happens when pain is constant and grief has nowhere else to go; when the only thing left to do is joke about the things that are slowly destroying you.
Our daily reality has become stranger than fiction. We are living a dark version of comedy. These are not jokes; they are the brutal ironies of life under siege, where despair and humor walk hand in hand.
We know this, and still we laugh.
Because we must.
That is what it means to survive here.
