The author standing over the rubble of his house, thinking of his missing brother, Nour, whom he had hoped to find sheltering there. Photo: Abdallah Aljazzar

Tonight, the cold is not just something I feel, it is something I see.

The cold rises from the earth like a ghost, mercilessly. No matter how tightly I wrap and hide myself in blankets, it curls around me in undulating waves. It then seeps in like freezing rain from nowhere, and clings to my skin, settling deep in my bones.

Even though my tent is sturdy, it is no match for the night’s bitter grip.

The author’s tent, where he lived from May 2024 to January 2025, subsequent to the Rafah invasion. Photo: Abdallah Aljazzar

When the sun rises, I wonder why this morning feels heavier than the last. Every day of this relentless displacement feels like swallowing bitter medicine that heals nothing, or like drinking poisoned water that only deepens the ache.

Still, I force myself to leave my tent. As usual, I find my family gathered together, but today their silence is different, it is dense and suffocating.

“Good morning, family,” I say, my voice low and hesitant. No one answers. It’s the unspoken truth that lingers in the cold air, and we all feel it: Nour, my brother, is still missing.

Nour stayed behind to collect more of our belongings when we evacuated Rafah on May 6, 2024. But he promised he would join us the next day. I believed Nour — I always did. But life has taught me otherwise. I waited for him for days that turned into weeks, then months. Nour never returned. I am still waiting for him.

I turn to my youngest brother, Mohanned, and direct him to stand for a photo. He rises and stands in front of our father. My true intent is not to capture him, but instead to capture our father’s face — etched with exhaustion and sadness. I want to show Nour, once he is back, how much our days were spent waiting for him.

As I raise the phone to take a photo, my father quickly covers his face with a hand and tears fall down his face — a silent cry for Nour. I had wanted to preserve a moment of my father, but instead I captured the void Nour left behind.

Mohanned, the author’s little brother, stands up for a photo, but their father covers his face in anguish. Photo: Abdallah Aljazzar

Nour’s name means ‘light’ in Arabic — without him, our lives remain shrouded in darkness.

In our tent, my family makes daily attempts to survive this cold weather and sad atmosphere. Before October 7, 2023, I would boil the kettle for coffee; something that once felt like a simple act now feels heavy and difficult. I hand my mum and sister their cups and my sister murmurs, “It tastes different each day. ” I try to read my mum’s eyes, “I feel the same,” they seem to say, but her sadness silences her — I know nothing tastes as it once did.

We cannot accept that Nour is gone. I have clung to the hope that Nour found shelter in our house and was unable to leave.

On January 19, 2025, after the ceasefire was announced, I returned to Rafah, along with my father and cousin, with a single purpose: to find Nour. But as we walked down what was once our street, I could see that everything familiar had vanished beneath layers of destruction. We couldn’t recognize our own street and others had to guide us to where our house once stood. Standing there, I saw nothing but rubble, and every house around it was reduced to the same fate. We had hoped to explore the house, to search for Nour inside, but there was nothing to search.

The author, with his father and cousin, were guided to the top of their street and saw it for the first time in 10 months. Photo: Abdallah Aljazzar

I long to pitch a tent near the ruins, to stay close to what was; but there is no untouched space left. All that remains is emptiness, both in the land and in my heart.

No house. No Nour.

Not yet.

The other day, as I was stoking a fire near the remnants of my house, one by one, my neighbors came to join me. One of them whispered to me, “My relative who was imprisoned and later freed says he met Nour in prison.” He left me wondering, “Why didn’t he try to contact me, if it truly was him?!” But I excuse Nour, because I knew that if he could, he would.

I have come to see October 7 as a nightmare. I want to believe that one day, we will wake up and realize that everything we have been through will have just been a painfully long and terrible dream, a hallucination from which we couldn’t escape. And Nour will return, having only gone for a walk.

One night, as we gathered together as a family, I smiled through my tears. “I met Nour in a dream,” I told them, “he came into my tent, and greeted me with ‘السلام عليكم (As-salaam alaykum). I’m alive.’ Then he vanished.”

One visit from Nour in my dream is enough to keep me going for the day, to keep me hoping and believing he will return.

I dream of a day when this nightmare ends and when I find my light again, my Nour, alive, somewhere.

Until then, I will not give up.

Not yet.

For Nour.

For what was.