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Nearly three years ago, on a quiet Saturday morning—our weekly day off as government employees—we woke up to a life we never imagined would be our last normal one.
The sound of explosions filled the air. The sky trembled, the ground shook beneath our feet, yet even then, our minds could not comprehend the scale of what was beginning. Even in our worst nightmares, we never imagined the war would last this long. We told ourselves, “A month… maybe two.” Back then, even that felt unbearably long.
During the first two days, as airstrikes began swallowing the city, I went to a supermarket to buy a few essentials. I didn’t buy much. I chose light foods that could give my children a little energy, believing we were preparing for a few difficult days—not a lifetime of displacement and loss.
When I returned home and had barely put the bags down, a warning came that the building next to ours would be bombed.
In that moment, I ran outside exactly as I was.
My children beside me.
We carried nothing except our phones.
Even our IDs and personal documents were left behind.
There was no time to decide what mattered most, because life itself was slipping through our fingers.
When the bombing ended, we went back inside. I gathered my children and told them, “Pack one small shoulder bag each. Just enough clothes and essentials for one week.”
One week.
How cruel those words sound now.
That single phrase has haunted me ever since.
I remember that night as if it were happening now.
The explosions were so close that my children were too terrified even to walk to the bathroom.
We all huddled together on one bed, holding each other tightly, desperately searching for a sense of safety that no longer existed.
No one slept.
Fear stayed awake with us until morning.
Then the message arrived.
A single message sent to every phone in Gaza.
“Move south of Wadi Gaza.”
I still remember how violently my hands trembled as I opened it.
I read the words over and over, unable to fully understand them.
But my heart understood long before my mind did.
I sat there crying.
Not because I understood the message—
but because I felt that something in our lives had ended forever.
Then my phone rang.
It was my children’s father, who had remained at his post in the Ministry of Health.
He told me, “Take the children and go to Rafah. I’ve rented an apartment for you.”
Through my tears, I asked, “For how long?”
With a confidence he was trying to give me, he answered:
“Just one week.”
How painfully wrong those words turned out to be.
Before leaving, my daughters helped me clean and perfume the house.
They made the beds, organized every room, and closed the windows, believing we would be back within days.
None of us knew we were preparing a home we would never see again.
I still remember the last look I gave my house.
It wasn’t just walls.
It was my entire life.
It held my dreams, the work of many years, my children’s laughter, our family photos, our holidays, and all the ordinary days we never realized were extraordinary blessings.
I stood there looking into every corner…
As if my heart were saying goodbye in my place.
Then I closed the door.
Not knowing I was closing an entire chapter of my life forever.
I left Gaza for the south, alone with my children.
I remained there for a year and a half.
A year and a half during which I witnessed more death than life.
I came to know hunger.
Thirst.
Displacement.
The freezing cold.
The unbearable heat.
Fear.
Illness.
And the unbearable pain of losing the people we loved.
I had to be everything.
A mother.
A father.
A source of strength.
Every single day I forced myself to appear strong, even on the days I was silently falling apart.
I hid my tears so my children would never see them.
But the body never forgets.
Every fear I swallowed.
Every trauma I buried.
Every sleepless night.
Every tear I refused to let fall…
They all remained inside me.
And today, my body is paying the price.
Now I look around me and see medicine everywhere.
Its smell fills every corner.
And I cry.
Not because I fear illness…
But because I mourn the person I used to be before the war.
Sometimes I have only one wish.
To wake up.
To open my eyes and find myself on the morning of October 7, 2023.
To discover that these past three years were nothing more than a long nightmare.
And to go back home…
Before my homeland became a memory.
Before my house became something I could only long for.
Before survival itself became the only dream left.
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