I can’t remember the last time I woke up naturally, either to sunlight streaming through the window or the noisy chime of an alarm. For over a year now, I’ve been jolted awake by daily explosions, their deafening blasts ripping through the silence of the morning. What’s left to destroy? I ask myself, rubbing my eyes, still heavy with sleep, my soul weighed down by the ever-present fear.
The Occupation has relentlessly targeted residential buildings, flattening memories, lives, and dreams.
If this were a game, I swear they would have quit by now, grown tired of the monotony of destruction. I deleted “Candy Crush” after playing for a month because I couldn’t stand the repetitive moves. But this isn’t a game. It’s driven by blind hate and racism, a systematic destruction that goes far deeper than any strategy or boredom could ever explain.
When I say my life is ruined, it’s not just a metaphor. My life, my world, has fallen apart. But as much as I’ve lost, I know there are people whose losses are even greater. The guilt that gnaws at me for what remains eats away at what little is left. In the midst of my own struggle, I find myself questioning if my suffering is even worth mentioning when so many others have been stripped of everything.
December is here again, no longer resembling its old self. It has returned like a thief, stripping away what little remains. Once, winter brought intimacy and renewal, filled with the scent of rain, earthy soil, and droplets tapping on windows. Plant pots, glistening with dew, framed the view with quiet joy.
It was a season that held us close, offering warmth in blankets and around modest heaters. Families gathered, sharing cups of sahlab and laughter. Rain-soaked streets shimmered like promises. Children splashed through puddles, their giggles breaking the gray. Even in struggle, there was room for joy, for twinkling lights and students running through the rain, embracing the cold as rebellion.
Winter has become a weapon, a force that chills to the bone. It targets those with no windows, no roofs, and no homes at all. Cold has come to drive us into loneliness, madness, and orphanhood. It eats away at the exposed, turning the very air and falling rain into accomplices of despair.
I feel the cold, but I never speak of it. My father would remind me, "Someone like you, with privilege, has no right to complain." In Gaza, a house without windows is still a home, and a partially destroyed house is better than a pile of rubble. His fear is hidden behind furrowed brows, dreading the same wind that could reduce everything he has built — his dreams, his labor — to dust.
I lost my favorite blanket during one of our miserable displacements, but I didn’t dare complain. So many thoughts remain unspoken, lodged in my throat.
If I ever told my father, he would say, "You had the luxury of evacuating, while others were killed or tortured as they fled."
He’s right. I only stumbled twice during the displacement, tripping in the dark because Israeli soldiers forbade us from using light. They didn’t kill me, so I’m supposed to be grateful. Isn’t that the measure of privilege here? Survival?
I wear a heavy hoodie to keep warm, thick leggings, and socks. At least I still have clothes, a privilege many of my friends and relatives no longer have after losing their homes. I can’t stop wondering how they’re coping with this biting cold. Even in my layers of clothing, I still feel a chill. I tell myself it’s from the nylon wrap covering the hole where a window used to be, tearing and letting in gusts of freezing air.
I glance at the door, which groans with every opening and closing. It is no longer what it used to be. The relentless weight of bombs over the past year and two months has left it unhinged. My father tried to repair it, but it needs more than fixing; it needs replacing. Yet, it remains closed. A slight push could break it, but for now, it holds.
Maybe this chill has nothing to do with the weather.
It is the kind of cold that comes from knowing others are suffering more than you, even as you are suffering too — those who do not even have unhinged doors to close.
It’s time for breakfast. What does one eat for the first meal of the morning? Before the war, I ate eggs and avocado toast. Now, there are no eggs, avocados, vegetables, or fruits in the market. It’s been like this for a year, and even when something is available, it’s ridiculously expensive. I’ve forgotten the taste of most of the foods I used to eat.
I lost more than 10 kilograms during the war. My initial, almost feminine urge to find happiness in being thinner quickly faded when I noticed my hair falling out and my skin becoming unnervingly pale. I get tired easily, and sometimes I hear my bones crack.
I am only 25.
I lost my intimacy with food. Now, it disgusts me. Everything is canned, processed, stripped of life. The flavors I once knew are gone, replaced by something cold and unnatural.
I wouldn’t say this out loud, though. Mama would remind me that many of our people have nothing to eat at all. We are fortunate to have canned food. We have chickpeas to make hummus. Sure, there is no tahini, but there is cumin. Hummus without tahini is not so bad, after all. And we have bread. In the south of Gaza, Palestinians stand in suffocatingly crowded lines just to feed their children, some losing their lives in the stampede of starvation.
Death from the absence of bread is not foreign to us. Many were killed in northern Gaza earlier this year in flour massacres. Israel seems determined to starve us, to kill us hungry.
Bread, which used to be so simple and mundane, now feels tainted. It’s filled with blood. No one in Gaza can eat it without feeling the weight of the price paid for something that should have been a basic right.
I sometimes wonder what one of those who were killed while trying to fetch a bag of flour would think if they could return, only to see that flour is finally available. "They killed me because I was hungry," I imagine they would say. The thought lingers, sharp and painful. Would they be angry, laugh at the absurdity, or weep at the cruel irony of it all?
I loved pouring olive oil on my hummus. I used to pour more than I should because I’m Palestinian, and I don’t care. But this year, there’s no olive oil. The olive harvest season bore no fruit because the Israeli regime controls most of the olive groves in Al-Zaytoun, the neighborhood famous for its olives. They have uprooted trees, displaced inhabitants, and denied people the labor of olive picking and pickling.
My dad jokes, "How can a Palestinian house not have olives or olive oil?" I replied, "How can a Palestinian man get cheated and buy olive oil mixed with sunflower oil?" He laughs and says, "It’s the same color as the original one, and I didn’t even smell it. I didn’t imagine this would happen."
I added some of that "cheated" oil to my tahini-less hummus, with a sprinkle of sumac. It wasn’t bad. I also drank tea with sugar. That’s a huge privilege. Sugar is crazy expensive now, but I can’t resist it. I have too much of a sweet tooth to give it up. Many Palestinians in Gaza drink bitter tea, just trying to get through the day.
During this war, I’ve felt oddly privileged for not having to carry water containers. Thank God I’m a woman; it’s now considered a man’s task under our newly formed social norms. Before the war, water flowed freely from the taps, and there was no need for such roles. Water wasn’t something you thought about; it simply existed.
Our justification? The age-old belief that women shouldn’t carry heavy things. And while I should feel grateful for being spared this grueling task, I can’t ignore the guilt that lingers. Carrying water isn’t just heavy; it’s heartbreaking. When I look out the window, I see little boys struggling with water containers, their small frames bent under the weight. Their faces are serious, far too old for their years.
They should be in school. For over a year, children in Gaza haven’t received formal education. Instead of learning in classrooms, they’ve been forced into survival roles. Watching them makes me wonder what kind of childhood is left for these boys, and what kind of future awaits them. How do you dream when survival consumes your every waking moment?
But it's not easy for women, either. There has been no cooking gas in northern Gaza for more than a year, and most people have to cook on open flames. Most of the wood was consumed long ago, and now they’re forced to burn paper, scraps of books, old newspapers — anything that will catch fire.
One evening, I sat with my neighbors, mostly women, as they shared their stories. Each of them revealed scars — burns and blisters from the open flames they had to cook over. I listened, the weight of their silence heavy in the air, before I asked, "What do you miss the most?" One of them said, "I miss seeing myself in a mirror."
Her words struck me harder than I expected, filling me with a deep sense of guilt. I don’t have to cook over a fire. I am fortunate enough to have solar panels, a privilege that many here can’t afford. Even though I struggle in the winter when the panels barely function, I don’t have to leave the house each day to gather scraps and build a fire just to survive.
This is not a war. Wars do not involve dehumanizing control over a population, where the mere act of providing food, medicine, or electricity becomes a topic of debate. When you hold that much power, you are not at war; you are treating an entire population as prisoners, killing them like cattle. I feel trapped, enclosed in a massive cage, with soldiers and tanks watching every move. Drones circle overhead, a constant reminder that we are always one step away from death.
Yet in Gaza, survival itself feels like a privilege, an irony that never fully settles in my mind. But maybe that is the point: to live in defiance of what is meant to destroy us. If I must die, I refuse to do it quietly or in fear. I choose to live and die doing what I love: reading, writing, hugging my nieces, and working when possible. I plant seeds and water my plants. Every little act of living, no matter how small, is a rebellion. It reminds me that I am still here, still human, still connected to something beyond this nightmare. Holding on to these fragments of life is my resistance, a way to reject the fear they want me to carry.
