The bodies of 88 unidentified Palestinians are buried in a mass grave in Khan Younis, after Israeli forces returned them to Gaza severely decomposed and without any identification, September 26, 2024. (Doaa Albaz/Activestills)

It is a terrible thing to witness the obliteration of your homeland. When I think about what we’ve lived through this past year, I feel like I’m going to lose my mind completely. It is a shock that I’m still unable to absorb. I try not to think at all, in the hope of maintaining my sanity until it ends.

Seconds go by like hours. One night of this torment is difficult enough; our souls feel suspended in time, until morning comes and we have to endure another day. We search for one piece of news that might change our lives for the better. I long for the day when we no longer hear the constant noise of bombs, warplanes, and drones. The day the death stops.

At the beginning, I was hopeful that the war would end within a week or two, like in the past. It won’t last more than a month, I would assure people; if we can just make it until then, we’ll be okay. I don’t know why I was so certain. Perhaps I believed that the world would step in to stop this madness. Twelve months later, we feel as though the world has simply accepted our suffering as if it is the natural state of affairs.

In an instant, my life was filled with terror. The school at which I used to teach has been destroyed. Several of my students and colleagues have been killed, martyred before I even had the chance to say goodbye. One colleague’s heart simply gave out, unable to bear all of this. I lost contact with many of my friends.

No longer able to do the job I love, I began channeling all of my remaining energy into writing, trying to give voice to the experience of Gazans under Israel’s brutal onslaught. But I am not an outsider: I face all of the same challenges that I report on — from forced displacement to a lack of food, water, and electricity, and the absence of healthcare.

A Palestinian family prepares food amid the rubbles in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, September 20, 2024. (Doaa Albaz/Activestills)

For the first eight months of the war, until we managed to buy a solar panel, my father would walk from our home in the Al-Fukhari neighborhood, between Khan Younis and Rafah, to the European Hospital in order to charge our phones, batteries, and other devices. The lack of food and water has remained a difficult and expensive problem: I never expected to have to pay $70 for a week’s supply of water, or to carry heavy containers with my family just to fill our tanks.

For my mother, who suffers from a bone and nerve disease, this year was spent in constant pain. She cannot move without her medications, which we search for in every hospital and pharmacy. When we do find them, we buy as much as we can. But often we don’t, so she has reduced her intake to make the medication last longer. We hear her groans, yet we’re helpless to alleviate her suffering.

Every time we leave our house, we recognize the possibility that any one of us could return in a shroud. We know that Israel’s incessant bombing means there is no safe place in Gaza — even inside our home. But we thank God every moment that our house is still standing and able to offer a partial sense of comfort.

My sister was not so lucky. In December, her house in Khan Younis refugee camp was badly damaged during Israel’s ground invasion, and she came to live with us. I tried to console her but she was devastated by the loss of her home, robbed of the future she was planning to build in it.

Clinging on to home

I will never forget the evening I narrowly escaped death. It was Aug. 16, and I was alone on the second floor of my family’s house. My mother, father, and sister were downstairs, and my brother was playing in the street with his friends.

I heard the sound of the missile as it descended, and braced for the explosion so I would know where to run. But I didn’t expect it to land so close — only a few meters away from our house. Suddenly, dust, rocks, and shards of glass were flying everywhere. I screamed for someone to save me. I still don’t know how I was able to get down to the first floor; the thick smoke prevented me from seeing anything around me. But when I made it outside, I grasped the extent of the damage.

Smoke rises after an Israeli airstrike in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, August 6, 2024. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)

Our neighbors’ house had been completely destroyed. The surrounding houses were badly damaged — including my uncle’s house, which was half destroyed. Our house was damaged too: shrapnel sliced a large hole in our roof, all the windows were shattered, and the water tank was in ruins. We were lucky to make it out alive, but I still suffer from bruises on my back.

For me, home is life. And all things considered, it is a miracle that we are still living in ours. But we were twice forced to abandon it as Israel’s attacks closed in, and each time we didn’t know if we would have a home to return to. It brought back awful memories from the year 2000, when I was 8 years old, and the Israeli army bulldozed our home to the ground; I was terrified that we would have to live through this painful loss again.

Our first displacement was during the early weeks of the war, when our area came under heavy shelling. We spent a cold night in the parking lot of the European Hospital; the corridors inside were already too crowded to accommodate us. I didn’t sleep a single moment. I felt as though there was a huge rock on my chest, weighing me down.

Then, on the morning of July 2, we fled again after the Israeli army issued evacuation orders for our neighborhood. We gathered our belongings into a truck and headed to my sister’s damaged house, which we tried to fix up as best we could. But I couldn’t bear the agony of being displaced from my own home, and so, despite the danger, I returned after 10 days with my father and brother, and my mother joined us soon after.

When we arrived back home, our neighborhood was nearly empty. Many of our neighbors had fled to Al-Mawasi, the so-called “humanitarian zone,” and wouldn’t return until around two months later. On several occasions, with the incursion of Israeli forces into the city, we were besieged in our immediate surroundings for a week or more, unable to move freely without risking being shot.

Back in the spring, my mother and I made the decision to leave Gaza. At first, she was reluctant to travel, worried about leaving behind my sister and her two children. But with the lack of treatment for her condition, she agreed that it would be for the best.

Our escape plan was in motion. We managed to register with a travel agency to leave through the Rafah Crossing, our bags were packed, and we were merely waiting for our names to appear on the exit list. On the night of May 6, our time finally arrived. Then the unimaginable happened: the following morning, as we awaited confirmation that we could leave the next day, the Israeli army invaded Rafah. The first thing it did was occupy the Rafah Crossing, cutting off our last passageway to the outside world.

Every day, we wait for the crossing to reopen so that we will be allowed to leave. We dream of that moment. But each day that I remain stuck here, I lose a little more hope for the future of Gaza.

Ruwaida Kamal Amer