In Gaza I live moments from death

On Wednesday, Nov. 15, 2023, I sat with my family in our home in Al-Shati camp. I went to our kitchen to drink some water when suddenly, without warning, I heard a huge explosion. The smoke was thick in our kitchen, and so I headed to the balcony.

The last thing I remember was seeing my neighbors. I flew into the door, my knee started bleeding, and I started screaming. Then my mother was screaming when she saw me. My sight started to blur; the last thing I saw was the tears of my mother.

When I woke up everyone was beside me: my father, my mother, my brother, my aunt, and their sons and daughters. I started questioning myself: Do I deserve their tears? Do I deserve this love from these special people? And in my head, I said, “I have no hope in this life as long as my beloved family, friends, and colleagues are being killed by these barbaric soldiers.”

Is it a crime to be me or to be a Palestinian? I have witnessed every act of violence in Gaza since the day I was born. But this current war of darkness is the scariest. I have witnessed too much — children losing eyes, losing legs — as well as the deaths of people right in front of me. We get warnings to get out of our homes; what good do these warnings do?  Even when I am writing the word “home,” I am crying.

We decided (the family members) to evacuate from my home, but to where? To nowhere. We went to El-Shifa Hospital, because of the heavy bombardment, which was called a safe place, but even the hospital was attacked, twice, as the world has heard. Drones, rockets, bullets, and missiles are constant.

I have slept on the street with my family instead, trying to dream of a basic life. But the truth is simple: Gaza has just been killed.  There is no food, no water to drink, no electricity or medicine. You can’t even locate the graves of the dead. When the Israelis let the Egyptians bring in two trucks after 18 days, what was inside? Only some clothes for the undertaker to stuff the corpses into.

The Israeli soldiers are shooting people in the streets in Gaza, even while they demand that we evacuate from our homes. I can’t even rest my hand; the heavy pages are killing me.

If you are losing your brother or anyone else to injury, you can’t even call anyone for help because there is no internet signal. There are no medical supplies to heal someone injured. Because there are so many injuries occurring there is not enough room in the hospitals.

Which are also under attack.

Although I am currently sharing a room with 20 members of my family, this is the wisest and only option.

Finding a source of water, making a few loaves of bread, gathering firewood, having one meal, sleeping, thinking of how I can escape from this fate — I hang onto that last light of hope that a ceasefire will decrease the loss of people.

Oh, the horror. The sound of bombs is louder than any sound I have ever heard in my life. The heavy sounds of explosions are heartbreaking, and those sounds are just the beginning of the stories of death in Gaza.

I’ve never experienced starvation before. But then I went two days without a single piece of bread and drank tainted water. I went grocery shopping to find food for my family, but on the way, I noticed a large gathering of people outside the Green Cafe in Dair Al-Balah. I was so hungry, I fainted and collapsed on the ground. Those people saved me by putting a spoonful of sugar in my mouth.

Modern Israeli jets are clouding the sky over Gaza, and innumerable large whistling bombs are being dropped 24/7 on helpless civilians. Even so, if the people of Gaza are subjected to suffering, agonizing pain, death, and despair, we are nevertheless able to put aside reality for a few moments of happiness and snap a cute photo of our adorable children.

Sir, we impart life lessons! Every morning, when we Palestinians get up, we educate the rest of the world on how to live, sir! But life in Gaza is unbearable. During this war, my life is in limbo because Gaza has become a huge grave for Palestinians. I have already been displaced from my home three times, but I still don’t know where to seek safety because, as a Palestinian, the word safety has lost its meaning.

Without pause, hundreds of rockets have been raining down from the Gaza sky. I can’t sleep at night; the loud sounds of drones are more than you can imagine. If I survive this horrible war, I want to tell the world how my dreams have vanished.