Return to Gaza, unknown to my own city | Israel-Palestinian conflict

North Gaza, Palestine – We did not have a home to return to. And the city of Gaza we knew is no longer. But we came back.

Why? Maybe it was nostalgia for our previous life – before October 2023S Maybe the emotions we had left before our shift He stayed, waited for us to meet us.

Either way, the reality that congratulated us was harsh and unknown. I understood how much from a stranger I had become in my own city, where I had spent nearly 30 years of my life.

I was walking the streets that I could no longer recognize, I lost myself among the enormous destruction. I was struggling to find my way from the destroyed home of my family to the house of my laws, which, although still standing, carried the deep marks of war. I walked down a street, in another – without familiar attractions to guide me.

No communication networks, no internet, no electricity, no transport – even water. My excitement from the return turned into a nightmare – the devastation and the devastation was anywhere I turned.

I tingled, I went through the broken remains of family homes. My goal was to get to where my home stood. I already knew it wasn't – I saw photos.

But standing there, in front of the ruins of the seven -storey building, where I had made so many memories with my family, I was silent.

Homes can be restored

One of my neighbors was also coming back from a shift to the south, arrived. We exchanged broken smiles as we watched the remains of the labor of our lives. She was short of me – she managed to save a few things, some old clothes.

But I found nothing. My apartment was on the first floor, buried under layers on layers of debris.

My colleague, photographer Abdelhakim Abu Riash arrived. I told him I did not have shock, even no emotion. Not that I did not grieve, but more recently that I was in a state of emotional numbness -Samo -impaired anesthesia, perhaps a survival mechanism that my mind had perceived to protect me from madness.

My husband, on the other hand, was visibly angry, though silent.

We decided to leave, and as I turned my back to my destroyed home, deep pain covered my heart. Now there is no shelter, there is nowhere to call ours.

But what prevented us from falling apart was to know that we were not alone – the whole city stood in ruins.

“At least we survived and we're all safe,” I told my husband, trying to comfort him. And then, horrifying memories of the last 15 months – spent wandering through hospitals and refugee camps He rushed back. I reminded him: “We are better than those who have lost all their families, better than the little girls who lost their limbs. Our children are safe, we are safe. Homes can be restored. “

We say this often in gas and is true. But it does not delete the weight of home loss.

“Be careful with water”

Unable to go further, we headed to the house of my laws. We were told that it was still standing, but when we approached the scenes of devastation, we could not recognize the building.

We will now live here, in the rest: two rooms, a bathroom and a kitchen.

But once again there was no room for shock here. Survival required an adaptation, however little we had. That was the rule of war.

We found a similarity inside. My husband's brother had arrived in front of us, cleansed a little and provided some water. His only warning: “Be careful with water. There is no one in the whole area. “

This single sentence was enough to drain the last ounce of hope from me. I felt a lubricating mix of despair, nausea and exhaustion. I couldn't think of anything but water – just water.

The sewer system of the house was destroyed. The walls were torn apart. The land and the first floors were completely flattened. Life here is barren and completely gloomy.

And what worse was the renovated shock of watching the balcony in devastation, as far as the eye could see – too huge, too prevailing to allow to escape the trauma.

My friend, who had stayed north, had often told me: “The North is completely destroyed. This is incomprehensible. “Now I believed her.

My mother's dresses

The next morning, I went to my parent's home in Sheikh Radvan, subordinate to what I would find because I knew that our neighbors had already sent us photos – the house was still there, but the outstretched fire.

Thehe Israeli army We stayed in it for a while before they set it on fire until they retired, they told us.

We even found a Tiktok video, a soldier who had been shooting, eating McDonald's sandwich in my bride's living room as I watched the neighboring houses burn.

I wandered around the house, covered by a flood of memories that were reduced to ashes and ruins. Only one room had experienced the fire: my parents' bedroom. The fire did not touch him.

I entered my mother's room. I lost my mother on May 7, during the war.

Her clothes were still hanging in the closet, embroidered dresses, untouched by flames. Her belongings, her Qur'an, her prayer chair – everything remained, covered only with strong dust and broken glass.

Everything collided compared to the moment I stood in front of my late mother's wardrobe, tears courted as I gently removed her dresses, wiping the dust.

“This is the dress I wore for my brother Mohammed's wedding,” I whispered to myself. “And this … for the Moataz wedding.”

I grabbed my phone and called my sister, still south, my voice trembled between sobs and joy: “I found my mom's embroidered dresses. I found her clothes! They didn't burn! “

She was panting with happiness, immediately announced that to the north she would run north the next morning to see our mother's belongings.

This is what life has happened here – ruins everywhere, and yet we enjoy every fragment, every thread that connects us to the past.

Imagine what it means to find the only tangible traces of our most valuable loss – my beloved mother.

No gas I knew

Two days later, after sifting the remains and memories, I was forced to go beyond my grief.

I decided to visit the Baptist hospital in the morning, hoping to meet fellow journalists, to regain some sense of myself and to try to work on new stories.

I went for a long time, unable to find transport. My clothes were soon covered with dust – everything else after the buildings were sprayed by Israel's bombs.

Each passerby was the same, covered with gray layers from head to toe, eyelashes, weighed from debris.

Around me, people cleared the remains of their homes. Stones were raining from the collapsed upper floors as the men and women fell apart, the dust curved in the air, absorbing entire streets.

A woman stopped me and asked where she could recharge her loan by phone. I hesitated, then I exploded, “I'm sorry, Aunt, I'm new here … I don't know.”

I passed, shocked by my answer. My subconscious had accepted it – it was no longer a gas I knew.

I knew Gaza by heart. Each al-al-jalaa street, Shati Camp, Sheikh Radvan, Remal, Al-Nundy. I knew all the rear roads, every market, every famous bakery, every restaurant, every cafe. I knew exactly where to find the best cakes, the most elegant clothes, the branches of telecommunications companies, internet service providers.

But now?

There were no sights left now. There are no street signs. There are no indicative points. Does that matter already?

I continued to walk along Al-Jalaa Street, fighting to put the past on the ruins. Sometimes I succeeded, sometimes I was shooting later to compare it with what it once was.

North and south

Finally, I found a car heading to my way. My driver pointed to sit next to a woman in the front seat. Five more women and a child were pressed together.

Along the way, the driver lifted another passenger and stuffed it in the last space available.

He felt like a mistake at any moment – overloading the system into my mind.

At the hospital, my memories returned to the Hospital of Martyrs at Al-Aksa in Deir El-Bala, where hospitals became the only shelter of journalists-the only places with electricity and the Internet since the beginning of the war.

This time the faces were different and it was obvious that the North journalists had survived this war very differently from how we had south.

I moved hesitantly through the corridors, every time I came across a journalist, I whispered to Abdelhakim: “Is this man from the north? Or were they with us in the south? “

It was a real question. Conversations, familiarity, the weight of the words – they all felt different, depending on where we endured the war.

Yes, in the south there was death and destruction, Israel had not spared Rafa, Deir El-Balah or Han Enis. But it was different in the city of Gaza and North Gaza – the people here had endured the pain to the extent that we simply did not have.

Every time I recognized a colleague from the south, my face lit up and stopped, eager to speak, sharing stories about the impossible journey on the path of Al-Rashid, asking their first look at the city, for the moment they saw their family homes.

Then I really understood: we felt like strangers in our own city.

The fight for belonging again

Israel's war not only changed the landscape of Gaza, but also the people in it. He had formed new identities under fire, dividing us in ways that we had never imagined.

Bitter, sick truth – we lost Gaza, again and again, her people, his spirit, himself.

For 15 months, we thought that the biggest nightmare was displacement -this exile was the worst fate. People cried home, dreaming only of returning.

But now the return seems far more unmistakable. To the south we were called “displaced”. To the north, we are now “returning”, the people who remained accused of leaving us when the evacuation orders came.

Sometimes we also blame ourselves. But what choice did we have?

And now, we carry a quiet shame – a small, unspoken mark that lived in our hearts from the day we left, and that we see that it is reflected in the eyes of the others.

I imagined that on the day we returned north, it would celebrate the end of the war, but, wandering the devastated streets, I realized: I am still waiting for this end, the moment we can say, “This head of bloodshed is over. “

I long to put the last period, so we can start again – even if the beginning is painful. But there is no period. No closure. Without end.

I go forward, dust cling to my clothes that I don't bother to get rid of. The tears are mixed with the ruins and I do not wipe them.

The reality is that we have been abandoned to an open fate, a road without direction: We are lost. We do not have the strength to recover. There is no energy to start again.

We lost this city, my friends.

Gaza, which we loved and knew, died – defeated, cut off and alone.

But nevertheless, she still lives inside us.