‘I'm afraid I’ll become a number’: Life in Gaza one year on from October 7

Hello. Ahmed from Gaza here. I’m worried that my name might become breaking news.

Like when they say: ‘So-and-so number of bodies have been recovered during a violent bombardment of different areas.’ Then I’ll become a plain number, added to the counter which has not stopped counting to this moment. I wouldn’t like it for my name and my family’s name to become numbers, odd or even.

I have many dreams – to travel to a wider world, outside Gaza, so I can truly believe the scenes, images and experiences that I see online.

I have many dreams – to travel to a wider world, outside Gaza

I am talking to you even though I don’t have any information about what’s happening outside. Outside my home, I mean – the one we returned to after our neighbourhood was bombed a few days ago. There is no means of communication with anyone. The sound of bombardment hasn’t stopped, and neither have the flares illuminating the area, warning of who knows what. What I fear most is that everything will become normal: the normal is that the house gets bombed, and the abnormal is that there was no advance warning. The normal is that the child dies, and the abnormal is that he died screaming ... And many other things, that this note is too small for.

I am Ahmed. My friends call me Asem or Asoumi. I don’t have much news about my friends. I check on them through short videos, whenever I get the chance to be online. I check all the faces to make sure that my friends are not among them – but at the same time I realise that all those in the pictures and videos are in fact my friends ... I end up crying.

I am Ahmed, and I’ve hated Arabic and grammar classes since I was little. I hate questions about finding the difference between two things. I hate answers, and I love questions. A question two days ago made me stop and think: What’s the difference between escalation and war? I wondered why it matters if the result is the same: a mother crying and a screaming child (if there is a chance to cry and scream).

I am Ahmed, and I am afraid that I will die and become a number, and that everything will be gone before I complete what I have to write.

–Ahmed Mortaja was born in Gaza in 1996. He wrote this diary piece, sourced from Passages Through Genocide, in the early hours of 13 October 2023. An airstrike destroyed his home on 28 October, but he came out from under the rubble and continued writing.

It was the evening of 10 October 2023. My family and I were sitting in our home in the al-Tawam neighbourhood in the north of Gaza. That night, we were trying to find peace of mind, worried about what the future had in store for us.

All of a sudden, bombs started raining from the sky. The windows of our home all shattered as glass, rocks and concrete went flying everywhere. We lost electricity as smoke and debris filled our home, reducing visibility to zero. We ran to the basement, fearing that the next bomb was for us.

That’s when I realised our lives would never be the same again. As we sat in the basement, we looked at each other in silence. My whole family was trembling in fear. Little did we know, a genocide was awaiting us.

If only I had known to plan for a genocide, I would have cherished those last moments at home, my last night in a bed, my last morning coffee, my last kibbe dipped in hummus, my last day at work, my last laugh, my last birthday celebration, my last everything. If only I had known, I would have packed up a few of those memories with me.

If only I had known to plan for a genocide, I would have cherished my last night in a bed, my last morning coffee

But I didn’t have the chance to do that, because we decided to evacuate immediately. That’s one of the horrible things we have to do all the time – try to guess the least bad option among terrible options.

We decided to evacuate. My family of ten squeezed into our car, kids on top of adults. Within a few seconds, there was another massive explosion in front of us. The next thing I remember, blood was everywhere in the car. I grabbed my nine-year-old brother, Adam, who is disabled, and I held him tightly.

I still remember the sound of my mum’s voice at that moment. ‘Adam is dead, Heba, I can’t feel him!’ she said. I looked at Adam, and told her that he was OK, that he was just in shock. We were all shocked. Somehow, we survived.

I held Adam as we got out of the car and started running back home. My dad was in front of me, the rest of my family was behind me. Who was I supposed to look after? Adam was too scared to be left alone even for a few seconds, and so I couldn’t leave him. I could feel my hands going numb from holding him so tight. ‘Dad,’ I said. ‘Help me, I can’t hold Adam any more.’

My dad shouted: ‘My finger is cut, Heba, I can’t!’ My dad’s hand had been sliced open and blood was gushing everywhere. Debris littered the streets, almost looking like an earthquake. But it was not an earthquake. It was a bomb sent to kill us. Maybe it was a dumb bomb, an imprecise bomb, that can land thirty metres or more from its target. Half the bombs Israel sends to kill us are dumb bombs. Israel exports sophisticated military technology to the world but, when it comes to us Palestinians in Gaza, the latest technology is not needed, since Israel’s ‘focus is on [creating] damage, not on precision.’ That’s what an Israeli Army spokesperson said on 10 October 2023 – the same day Israel bombed our home.

We rushed to our neighbour’s house, hoping and praying they were home. Their son is a nurse; he treated my dad while we waited for an ambulance. Hours passed. We later found out that two of the ambulances that tried to reach us were bombed. Eventually, an ambulance arrived, thank God.

We sheltered at al-Shifa hospital while my family was being treated. My one-year-old niece Sarah needed stitches in her head and hand. She was in so much shock she couldn’t even cry. My brother Mohammed had a splint in his head and needed surgery, which we were eventually able to get for him seventy- six days later. My dad’s hand was so badly wounded the doctors thought they might have to amputate. But, thank God, we cared for it and cleaned it every day, and he still has his hand.

We took refuge in al-Shifa hospital for a month. We barely had anywhere to sleep and we did not have access to clean water. Every day, hundreds of people would arrive at the hospital, some severely injured, some already dead. The agony of the families of the victims was too much to bear. The only thing I remember from al-Shifa is the never-ending screams of pain that filled the hallways of the hospital.

Then we were forced to move to the south, to Khan Yunis. We made the dangerous journey on foot. For the first time, I felt what my grandparents must have felt during the Nakba in 1948. I understood why they kept the keys to their homes. Those keys were filled with memories.

We stayed in Khan Yunis for twenty-four days, where we had almost nothing. We had no gas for cooking, no electricity, no means of transportation and no safe place to shelter in. We were among the lucky ones just to be able to take a shower. Then we were ordered by the Israeli military to leave. We moved again, this time to Rafah.

As I walk through the streets of Rafah today, all I see is fear. The fear of life and the fear of death. We are living in fear every moment of the day. We now also fear that we will never have our lives back.

In this war, who am I? To the world, it seems I am just a number, a person who is counted on a list of people displaced, people injured or people hungry and thirsty. And if the next bomb is for me, I will be another number to add to the number of people killed in the genocide – and then I will be forgotten.

–Heba Almaqadma is a writer, English/Arabic translator and student of pharmacy at Al-Azhar University in Gaza. She describes herself as a beacon for the silenced voices of the unjustly treated, finding solace and inspiration within the pages of literature. She contributed this memoir to Palestine Nexus in March 2024.

I’m thirty-five years old, married and a mother of two children.

My daily routine was amazing. I worked as a project officer at one of the local institutions here. I started my day walking beside the sea on the Corniche. After work I would go to the

gym, then spend the evening with my children and friends. We had visits, we had outdoor activities – we had too many things to do, in fact. We had the sea, we had a great beach, we had places to go. I miss this life.

We had the sea, we had places to go. I miss this life.

[Everything now is] turned upside down. I’m waiting for my destiny. I’m living my time minute by minute, because we don’t have safety. We can’t plan for the next step. We have no idea what will happen, if we will stay alive or not, or our loved ones will stay alive or not. So there is no daily routine. I’m currently displaced for the second time. I moved from Gaza to Khan Yunis, and then from Khan Yunis to Rafah, to a place called al-Mawasi.

We don’t have any safety, we don’t have any shops for food. We are looking for food, looking for water, looking for electricity, for communication with the other side of the world. It’s a miserable life.

Being a displaced woman is a tragedy. You don’t have your own privacy. You don’t have your own health routine. You don’t have your own pads, because we have a shortage of pads for our cycle, and we don’t have access to hygiene. We wear headscarves all the time, even when we are sleeping. We don’t have any space. We are obligated to take care of the family members. We have this double responsibility for them, for the children, even for our elderly family members – our husbands, our sisters, our brothers and all the family members. To be a woman in this world, you are doubly victimised – from the occupation, from the current situation, from the community. Even the relief aid that we are receiving doesn’t take into consideration our needs as women. The response to our demands related to hygiene is weak. We are suffering from all of these multiple issues. I miss my home. I miss my privacy. I miss my bed, my clothes.

I’m wearing men’s clothes because there are no women’s clothes that fit me in the market. I feel like a man while I’m wearing these clothes, but I don’t have any other choice. I want to be back in my home and to sleep safely

–Noor Swirki spoke to Vinícius Assis for Hammer and Hope in December 2023 and January 2024.

*This is an extract from the new book Daybreak in Gaza: Stories of Palestinian Lives and Culture

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