We are living in a constant whirlpool of fear, where even temporary safety feels like a mirage. The fear of hunger, of displacement, of becoming mere numbers in an endless list.
The scent of death has returned to my city once again.
Those scenes I despise—mothers bidding farewell to their children near the morgue refrigerators, wives weeping over their husbands who were on their way to prayer, and a mother sobbing as she says her children died of hunger.
As for me, my friends abroad keep asking how I am, and I don’t know how to describe what I feel. Should I tell them that I can no longer bear this death and destruction? Or should I say that I will wake up once again to hear the names of my loved ones announced in the Ministry of Health statistics—while I continue to insist they are not just numbers? Who would understand me then?
Will I go back to packing my bags again, asking myself the question I always avoid: What will you take with you, Noor? Should I pack both summer and winter clothes this time? Should I take my books—the library where I kept everything I’ve read? Should I take Darwish’s book? Hussein Barghouti’s? But this time, I will certainly not forget to bring my journal, where I recorded all my teenage years.
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Yet other questions haunt me like ghosts: Will the house remain standing, or will I lose it? Will I live in a tent again? Will I get sick again—will hepatitis return? I have no answers to these questions. Perhaps these very questions can tell you how I feel.
On the night of Ramadan 18, at 2:17 a.m., I woke up in panic—I heard a sound like an explosion or bombing. When I fell asleep, it was calm. There was no death, no blood.
But I woke to the sound of ambulances, the cries of mothers from the neighbors, and the screams of children. This scene went on for half an hour. And then the news came: “The resumption of war on the Gaza Strip.”
That morning, people woke to evacuation orders from places they hadn’t even settled into yet. I know this scene well. I’ve memorized it by heart—let me not repeat it. But I will say: if you put yourself in the place of these people, you would wish for death instead of displacement—because that would be a thousand times easier.
Scenes of schools filled with displaced people—the word ‘displaced’ has returned, and with it, the question has resurfaced: Where do we go?
My mother stopped a woman walking with fear written across her face. She was recounting what had happened in Beit Hanoun, and the evacuation orders they had received. She said, “We are fasting and exhausted, and here we are looking for a place to sleep. Where do we go? We had barely settled.”
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‘I Felt Nothing’
Eva, a 19-year-old girl who has been living through the war since its first day on October 7, shared her story with me upon hearing about the resumption of fire.
“At first, it was unbearable. The wounds of war hadn’t yet healed. The word ‘unbearable’ isn’t even the right word—it was shocking. When we heard the sounds, we rushed to the safest place in our house,” she said.
“But it wasn’t me who was running—it was the shock, the shock we never had a chance to recover from. I felt nothing. I thought that was a good thing—until it was over. Only then did everything hit me in a way I could never have imagined.”
Eva told the Palestine Chronicle that a choking grip clutched her chest. “Breathing was difficult. I wasn’t really there—I was just lying on the couch, trying to comprehend what had just happened. I was stuck in the past, where emotions were too heavy to bear, where seeking help brought no answers, where we were forced to face feelings we couldn’t escape—because death was everywhere.”
“Stop talking about Gazans not deserving a second genocide—Gazans didn’t deserve one in the first place. We strive for a chance to heal. We don’t want the war to happen again,” Eva said, in tears.
Eva’s words mirror what we all feel here in Gaza. We are living in a constant whirlpool of fear, where even temporary safety feels like a mirage. The fear of hunger, of displacement, of becoming mere numbers in an endless list.
The fear of hunger returning is real. Markets are now filled not with goods, but with people. Prices are rising every day. Everyone is thinking about securing bags of flour, sugar, and a few legumes for their families.
The only “solution” to the hunger crisis now lies in opening the Karam Abu Salem crossing—a crossing that feels like a wolf sinking its fangs into everyone in this city.
We have returned to the feeling of helplessness. A father’s helplessness to protect his children from death. And the helplessness of waking up under rubble and F-16 bombs, screaming to the world—but only those in the heavens can hear you.
(The Palestine Chronicle)
– Noor Abu Mariam is a 20-year-old Business Administration student at the Al-Azhar University in Gaza, specializing in English. As Gazan, she is currently focused on using writing as a powerful tool to share
her story with the world, aiming to shed light on the experiences and resilience of her community. She contributed this article to the Palestine Chronicle.
