From the very beginning of the genocide, I barely left my room. Three waves of displacement defined my movements: the first, on October 17, 2023, took me to my sister Doaa’s house in Khan Younis for nearly a month and a half. The second led me to my other sister Tasneem’s home in Al-Zawayda for about a week. The third displacement brought me to Rafah, where I stayed from December 31, 2023, until May 6, 2024.

Returning after Israeli forces occupied Rafah felt miraculous — our house had somehow survived. Still, I remained confined to my room until the so-called end of the genocide on January 19. The brief second ceasefire allowed me to step out for the first time with my father on March 17.

We drove across Gaza in our beloved car, visiting every corner of our city and stopping to see all our relatives on my father’s side — my aunts, uncles, and cousins — before returning home at midnight, only for the genocide to resume two hours later. After that, the outside world became almost inaccessible once again; my only venture outside was to make a brief, necessary visit to the dentist on August 23.

During that relentless isolation, I turned inward, to writing, to studying, to memory, and to personal growth. Each became a quiet act of resistance, a way to resist suffocation, to exist when existence itself was under siege. I immersed myself completely, separating my world from the chaos beyond my walls. Reclaiming life became an internal struggle, a fight to preserve traces of normalcy in a reality determined to erase every trace of it.

On Friday, OCtober 17, my sisters arrived at our home: Doaa with her 1-year-old son, Hossam; and Tasneem with her children, Nour, 3 years old, and Ezz Aldin, a year and a half old. They stayed with us for a full week, which became one of the most beautiful and meaningful times I had had in years. I didn’t know at the time that these moments of peace and happiness wouldn’t last.

I especially cherished taking care of little Hossam, whom I had missed more than anyone. He is very attached to me and shows so much affection, and being with him reminded me of the warmth we had been deprived of for so long.

That gathering was only the second time our family had been together since the genocide separated us two years ago. That same week, my aunt arrived with her son and daughter and stayed overnight. We also invited my cousins Ahmed and Alaa — the only remaining members of their family, as the rest were martyred — and they spent the day with us.

But on October 19, as we were talking and catching up, the Israeli occupation launched airstrikes across the entire Gaza Strip, including in my neighborhood. Our neighbors’ house was bombed, and we were pushed apart again, despite apparently being under a “ceasefire.”

I tried to calm myself by holding on to one truth: My father, my mother, my brothers, and my sisters were safe. Nothing matters more than their safety — if they are well, everything........

© The Intercept