Selene

And in the middle of all that chaos, amid the voices, the fear, and the smoke, I heard a voice I knew better than anything else in this world.

“Mom.”

He was crying.

When he saw me, he ran toward me and threw himself against my chest.

I held him.

And I cried.

I cried out loud, unable to stop myself.

He clung to me with all his strength, as though he was afraid that I, too, might disappear.

I covered his eyes with my hand.

And in that moment, I remembered his age.

I remembered that a child his age should have a memory filled with colors, toys, laughter, and his mother’s embrace—not smoke, fear, and the sounds of explosions.

He should remember the playground, not running for his life.

He should be learning the names of colors, not learning the smell of death.

But our children were robbed of their childhood.

I carried him in my arms and remembered that I had run outside without my hijab. I wanted to return to the tent as quickly as possible.

I wanted only to close the curtain around us and hide my children from this world, even if only for a few minutes.

But I stopped.

I heard someone shouting behind me:

“Can you bring us some bags? We need to collect what is on the ground.”

Then the voice repeated:

“We need bags to collect the remains of the martyrs.”

In that moment…

The tears froze in my eyes.

And time stopped.

I could no longer hear anything.

Not the explosions.

Not the people.

Not the children.

Only those words.

“We need bags to collect the remains of the martyrs.”

Since that day, the word “survival” has no longer meant simply being alive to me.

It means waking up every morning and discovering that we are still together.

It means finding my children in front of me.

Counting them once again.

One…

Then another…

And then breathing.

Because the war did not only take our homes and our lives.

It made us live every day afraid that it would take from us the only thing we had left:

Each other. Nada https://gofund.me/83e09b493

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.

The war has led us to nothing but a painful fate—a fate we did not choose, yet it chose us. Here, I try to shed light on some of the stories we lived through in a place that was once a safe haven for us, before it turned into a piece of hell. I was displaced in the city of Rafah, like thousands of others—strangers in our own land, crushed under psychological and physical humiliation. We were forced to do work far beyond our physical capacity, and found ourselves living a reality we had never known before—a nightmare we could not have imagined even in our worst dreams. Carrying water, lighting fires, baking bread… simple daily tasks elsewhere, but for us, they became small battles we fought every day just to survive. We lived every moment expecting that the next might bring news of losing someone dear. How I wished I could place my children inside my heart and walk away with them, far from all of this. I truly would have done it. The days were heavy with hardship under the sound of rockets, and the nights… were even more terrifying. We were living what could only be described as hell on earth. We waited for morning the way a starving person waits for food—if not more desperately. One day, my friend from the north managed to contact me through a rare internet connection. Her words were filled with hope. She told me she would head south, fleeing this hell with her daughter after a donor had covered the coordination costs. She was terrified for her child to the point of desperation, and that fear pushed her to knock on every door. I was so happy for her. We rejoiced when others managed to escape, as if it were salvation for all of us, in a time when we were falling one by one like rain. She told me she would come to say goodbye. I waited eagerly… longing to see a face that carried something of a beautiful past. The day she promised came… but she didn’t. Nor the next day. And with each passing day, the worry grew, and life became harsher. On the third day, I received a call from the European Hospital asking me to come. My heart raced. I looked around me—everyone was fine. So who was it? Without hesitation, I prepared to go, despite everyone’s objections. I felt that something grave awaited me. The road to the hospital was filled with danger. Bombardment was everywhere, and the explosions at sunset burned like flames devouring the sky. I covered my ears, trying to shield myself from the sound of death. I finally arrived… with a body still intact, but a shattered soul. The scene was unbearable: bodies everywhere, doctors treating the wounded in the hallways, and the smell of blood nearly made me faint. A child without limbs… a body without a head… I felt as if I had stepped into the heart of hell. Then I saw her. My friend… lying on a bed. Her hair was scattered, dried blood near her mouth, an IV connected to her hand… her body thin, as if life had quietly slipped away from it. I searched through the chaos for someone to explain what had happened. No one knew—until the doctor who had called me arrived. He said calmly: “We found your number in her phone.” Then he continued: “She was brought in from the checkpoint last night… she was with a young girl who had already passed away about a day earlier.” I opened my eyes in shock. I couldn’t speak. He added, “The mother is suffering from a severe nervous breakdown.” After that, I heard nothing. All I could think about was this: she had knocked on every door to save her daughter, and just as she came close to safety, death stole her child before her eyes. I sat beside her, holding her hand, crying silently. I called my children and told them I would stay there. I couldn’t say more. I spent the entire night by her side, watching her… as if she were asleep, except for the tears clinging to her eyelashes. I wished she would scream, speak—release the pain that had suffocated her. And in the morning… came a harsher dawn. Heavy bombardment, hundreds killed, death everywhere. Then the doctor came… And announced her death. A heart attack. I received the news alone. I cried like never before. I entered the hospital in fear… And left carrying a story of double death. Two bodies… a mother and her daughter. I accompanied them to their final resting place. Along the way, I stared at them in fear as my tears fell uncontrollably, my soul trembling from the horror I had lived. She only wanted to save her daughter… But the path to survival… became the path to death. “All we need from you is to extend a hand of help and support, at a moment when everyone else has abandoned us.”