Some stories are folded into the pages of oblivion, yet they never lose their value. It is our duty to tell what we lived and what they endured, so that we preserve their memory and keep their impact alive in our hearts and minds. I will tell you a story I lived through in every detail, a story so painful it could kill, a story that left its mark on my heart and soul forever. During one of our periods of displacement, we were in the Deir al-Balah area, in a small private camp that housed about twenty families. All of them belonged to a prominent social class before the war, due to their affiliation with one of the active institutions. I could not describe our financial situation at the time, for everyone had been stripped of all their possessions, as if the war had taken everything—even dignity and safety. The camp residents knew each other as if they were one family. My last tent overlooked farmland stretching as far as the eye could see. I would escape the scorching sun into the tent, sit on the ground behind it from midday until late afternoon, read a little, drift into my memories, cry, and recall what had been and what we had become. Day by day, this place became a refuge for everyone from the blazing sun. Even in winter, it felt as if torment had been poured upon us inside the tent. Yet, a kind spirit united us, proving the saying true: sometimes a stranger is closer to the heart than any relative. Then I noticed a girl from one of the families, always sitting apart from us, as if she were born in another world—a world without pain or war, despite everything around her. I was weighed down by pains and wounds, and I will tell you about my own story in another post. I carried so many burdens that even a simple question about how I was would wound me and remind me that I was not okay. But day after day, her calmness caught my attention, and I learned her secret—a secret I had lived and continue to live: loss. Her mother hadn’t told me anything, but she asked me to speak with her and break her isolation. I refused at first; I do not like imposing myself on anyone. Days passed, and the wounds drove their stakes deeper into our hearts. One December day, a month before the first ceasefire, I was sitting alone, wrapped in a thin scarf that offered no protection against the cold or the wind, for we had lost all our clothes multiple times due to continuous shelling. I tried to draw warmth from the cold sun and escape in my memories to days that would never return, to friends who would never come back, to moments of safety that had become only memories. I felt someone approaching and sitting on a chair beside me. I looked up to find her there, smiling shyly, trying to hide her wounds, a false smile holding back tears. She said, her voice choked with pain, “May I sit?” I smiled at her and nodded. She began, “How are you?” I answered honestly, “I’m not okay.” She cried, and I cried with her, not yet knowing her full story. She placed her hand on her chest and said, “It hurts.” I remained quiet, but her wounds opened up new ones inside me, digging into the hidden corners of my soul. She continued, “His family refused our marriage because he was more handsome and better educated than me.” I listened in genuine shock. Then she smiled and said, “But we married, and I gave birth to twins.” Her smile disappeared when she added, “He was martyred in the first month of the war.” I embraced her, sharing the pain, and we cried together. She lifted her head and said, “Mama told me I could talk to you; she loves you.” I gestured for her to continue. “My husband’s family insisted that in order to keep my children with me, I had to marry his brother.” This cruel tradition, where a widow is forced to marry her deceased husband’s brother to preserve the “lineage” or family, sometimes works, but more often fails. She said, “I married him with his family’s blessing, but he treated me like an animal, because he wanted to be the first in my life.” She added, “After his face wore strange expressions, he was martyred one month after our marriage, targeted in a car outside the supermarket.” I felt a shiver run through my body. She said, “I became a source of misfortune in my husband’s family; they treated me as one treats livestock.” Then came the most shocking moment: “Three months later, our neighbor’s house was targeted, and my children were martyred with their grandmother. I was seriously injured.” We cried in anguish, and I held her to my chest, her entire body trembling with pain and grief. It was a difficult day, yet she felt some relief, while I drowned in questions about how I still managed to keep my sanity after everything I had lived. We never spoke of it again, and I left her free to share whatever she wanted. Yet I silently reproached her mother for accepting her marriage to another man despite her refusal, despite being an educated woman. Her reply was silence. She was a remarkable girl, yet after everything that happened, she sometimes acted strangely, with expressions that frightened me. We parted ways when we returned to the north, but fate did not give them much time; she and her family were martyred after the war resumed and the ceasefire failed. She left, adding a new wound to the long list of pains and stories I had endured during three years of catastrophe—stories that never end, memories that never fade, leaving in the heart a deep wound that will never heal.