Meals the author cooked for Ramadan Iftar in Egypt in 2025. Photo: Isa Hamdona

In order to serve the place I love without being lost in it, I had to put some distance between us.

I’m currently caught between two realities; I am a medical student living abroad in Egypt to pursue my education, and I am also a son of Gaza, which is in my blood and memories. This contradiction is present in every phone call with my family: a screen that is transformed into a world that feels both far away and excruciatingly close. It is present in my quiet mornings pierced by an anxiety I cannot name, and in lonely nights filled with an anguish that feels like longing.

I was on a video call with my mother a few days ago and, even though the connection kept dropping out, her voice was enough to transport me back to my childhood. “What did you eat today?” she asked, as she always does. It’s a straightforward question that embodies a mother’s love and care. I was grinning when I told her that I had eaten fast food. She was silent for a few moments and her image kept freezing, but I could see the shadow of concern in her eyes. 

I have come to understand that being in exile entails more than just being physically removed from a place, it also means losing the web of family and friends that support and nurture you when you’re weak. A dinner cooked by your mother, a soft voice waking you in the morning, or having someone to share the day’s hardships with — memories of such moments all become treasures while you’re living in exile.

Everything is quantified in terms of cost and effort in exile. Exhaustion is silent in a place where no one can hear it. Even pleasure has a cost; I feel guilty for having occasional moments of normalcy and even enjoyment while my family is going through something so intolerable.

“When the crossing opens, I’ll come back to Gaza, and you’ll cook everything for me,” I told my mother, trying to keep the tone light. I was hoping for a chuckle or some words of support, but all I got was more silence. Then I heard the terrified and shocked shouts of my family: “Return to Gaza? You want to come back when everyone else is trying to leave?!”

Their response came out of fear, not rejection. Today, Gaza is more than just a besieged city, it is a skeleton of its former self, where day-to-day existence requires superhuman strength. Even getting a loaf of bread is an exhausting task in Gaza.

I still yearn for my homeland, though. I miss the fragrance of coffee in the morning, my siblings’ laughter, and my family home (which has been destroyed). I’ve learned self-reliance while in exile, but it has also left me sometimes feeling like a broken person carrying more than he can handle.

My hope is to become a doctor so that I can follow in the footsteps of those heroes who stood in the face of death in Gaza, tending to the injured under shelling while maintaining their humanity. However, there are sacrifices I have to make along the way to this dream. To serve the place I love without being lost in it, I had to put some distance between us.

Isa’s mother remained on the phone with him to guide him through every step in the process of baking fish. Photo: Isa Hamdona

During one phone call, I can remember my mother saying, “Gaza’s doctors are our pride, but I don’t want you to come back.” And, after pausing, she added, “Not because I don’t want you to help people, but because I don’t want you to lose your life and your dignity like others have. Continue your life abroad. It’s better for you.”

That’s when I realized that love can be cruel. My mother’s words showed me a love that prioritizes safety over intimacy, a love that sacrifices longing. My mother is someone who, in order to keep her son alive, suppresses her own wish to see him every day. 

I am left with trying to make an impossible choice between a homeland that needs me but is unable to defend me, and a personal goal that I am determined to achieve despite the emotional toll. I’m not sure where I’ll be in a few years, but Gaza will always be a part of me. My exile is an effort to survive, rather than to escape. It is a delayed promise, not a forgetting.

Maybe one day I will return — not as a weary dreamer or a student who escaped, but as someone who has gathered the pieces of himself and learned to love without losing himself. I am learning how to give without breaking and to be loyal to both my homeland and myself. Until then, wherever I am, I will hold Gaza in my heart and thoughts, and work for it with my hands and mind.

This article is co-published with Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.