How could I ever forget the morning of Oct.20, 2024? How could I erase the horrific sight etched into my memory — the severed heads at the doorstep, blood pooling at the entrance? Fourteen innocent lives — children, women, and young men — were wrenched away in an instant, leaving behind only silence and despair. Is this the justice we are condemned to endure in Gaza? Is this our fate, to wake each day to carnage while others wake to peace? Don’t we deserve the simple joy of a quiet morning, sharing breakfast with our children, free from fear? Or is the world content to watch as we live trapped in this unending nightmare?
For nights on end, I couldn't sleep, haunted by the endless massacres in northern Gaza. The cries of the victims still pierce my soul, and the rivers of their blood are a nightmare I can't escape. How can I close my eyes when these harrowing memories claw at my mind? Each night, the earth trembles with the deafening sounds of Israeli bombs, and each morning, we are greeted not by peace, but by the heart-wrenching news of more lives lost.
One particular night was unbearably harsh. Exhaustion overwhelmed me. After hours of enduring the fear in my body, I finally collapsed into sleep at seven in the morning. But it wasn't long before I woke up, startled and breathless, consumed by a single, haunting question: Who was martyred last night? Was it a neighbor? A friend? Or a loved one?
As I stood by the window, scrolling through the news on my phone, a sudden thunderous explosion roared so close that the air filled with suffocating dust, forcing my eyes shut. I struggled to open them, desperate to see through the chaos, to understand where the destruction had struck. But all I could feel was the weight of dread.
Two minutes later, I finally managed to look out the window, and what I saw was beyond anything I could ever imagine. Severed heads and dismembered bodies, limbs scattered everywhere, while the streets echoed with the screams of people horrified by the atrocity. The scene was so terrifying, the stench of blood filled the air, the blood of those who had been slaughtered without remorse. My family tried to clean the entrance of the house, but this incident left us in a state of shock, something none of us had ever witnessed before.
I saw a mother and her children, all of them without heads. The little girl was still holding a biscuit in her hand, but she had been martyred, and the biscuit lay between her fingers, stained with her blood. Another child, who was riding a bicycle moments before, never got to finish his ride, as his life was stolen in an instant. And then there were several young men, their lives cut short perhaps as they were walking home to their families. It was as if death had come for them, and there was no escape.
This wasn't the first massacre to unfold on the street where I live, but it was undoubtedly the most horrific. We were surrounded by the Israeli Occupation Forces on all sides, trapped in a nightmare that seemed endless. It was impossible to move or go anywhere, under their watch, yet some in the neighborhood were left with no choice but to venture out in search of food for their children. We heard of one person who was gunned down instantly in the street, targeted by the merciless fire of an Israeli tank. And as if that weren't enough, the tank didn't just end his life, it also drove toward his corpse, crushing his body beneath its wheels in a barbaric act of violence.
There was one day when the drinking water my family and I used ran out, we couldn’t look for more because fear held us captive. Stepping outside was an unthinkable act; anyone who dared to do so was sure to meet death. In the face of this terror, we had no choice but to drink contaminated water for eleven agonizing days. We had suffered through four sieges before, but August was the cruelest of all, leaving us utterly deprived of safe drinking water.
During the brutal siege of northern Gaza, imposed by the Israeli occupiers, we would seal every window and every possible opening with desperate precision, knowing that if they discovered us, we would instantly be killed. I will never forget the day we heard the harrowing cries of a family whose presence was betrayed by the innocent wails of a small child. Israeli soldiers forcibly displaced some of them from their homes, while they killed others without mercy.
The Israeli occupiers had a ruthless method for searching homes — drenching each one in a relentless hail of tank fire that tore through walls, completely destroying them as if they were never there. We spent endless hours lying flat on the ground, frozen with fear, unable to move, clinging desperately to life amid the chaos and terror.
I am still enduring these cruel nights, waking to the heart-wrenching news of loved ones lost. With every passing moment, I cling to the desperate hope for a ceasefire, a chance to end these harrowing massacres. I yearn to see my friends and relatives, those I have been separated from for over a year and two months, longing for a reunion that feels like a distant dream.
