Returning to Gaza, a stranger in my own city

Palestine’s northern Gaza: We lacked a place to call home. And we were aware that Gaza City had vanished. &nbsp, But we returned.

Why? Perhaps it was nostalgia for our previous relationships before October 2023. Perhaps the emotions we left behind had persisted before our return to the south had arrived.

Either way, the reality that greeted us was harsh and unfamiliar. In my own city, where I had spent nearly 30 years of my life, I realized how unlikable I had become.

I wandered through streets I could no longer recognise, lost amid the overwhelming destruction. I struggled to find my way from my family’s ruined home to my in-laws ‘ house, which, though still standing, bore the deep scars of war. Without any well-known landmarks to guide me, I walked down one street and into another.

No communication networks, no internet, no electricity, no transportation – not even water. Where I turned my excitement for returning had turned into a nightmare: destruction and destruction.

Numb, I roamed through the shattered remnants of family homes. My goal was to travel back to the former homestead. I already had pictures to prove that it was no longer.

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

Homes can be rebuilt

One of my neighbours, also returning from displacement in the south, arrived. &nbsp, We exchanged broken smiles as we gazed at the wreckage of our life’s labour. She was luckier than me – she managed to salvage a few belongings, some old clothes.

But I found nothing. The first floor of my apartment was covered in layers of debris.

My colleague, the photographer Abdelhakim Abu Riash, arrived. I told him that I felt no shock, not even any emotion. &nbsp, It wasn’t that I wasn’t grieving, but rather that I had entered a state of emotional numbness – a self-imposed anaesthesia, perhaps a survival mechanism my mind had adopted to shield me from madness.

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

We decided to leave and, &nbsp, as I turned my back on my destroyed home, a deep pain gripped my heart. No place to call our own right now, just shelter.

Knowing that we were not the only ones, a city was in complete ruin, prevented us from colliding with one another.

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

We say this often in Gaza, and it is true. However, losing one’s home is still a burden.

“Beware with the water!”

Unable to walk any further, we made our way to my in-laws ‘ house. We had been told it was still standing but as we approached through scenes of devastation, we couldn’t recognise the building.

This was where we would now live, in what remained: two rooms, a bathroom and a kitchen.

But once again, there was no space for shock here. Survival demanded adaptation, no matter how little we had. The law of war was that.

Inside, we found a semblance of relief. My husband’s brother had arrived ahead of us, cleaned a little and secured some water. His only warning: “Be careful with the water. There’s none left in the entire area”.

I had no choice but to accept that one sentence because it gave me the last shred of hope. I felt a crushing mix of despair, nausea and exhaustion. Water is all I could think of, just water.

The house’s sewage system was destroyed. Walls were torn open by shelling. Complete flattening of the ground and first floors. Here, everything is completely bleak and barren.

Then there was the resurgent shock of seeing destruction as far as the eye could see, too vast and overwhelming to allow escape from the trauma, which made things worse.

My friend who had stayed in the north had told me often: “The north is completely destroyed. It’s unliveable”. Now I believed her.

My mother’s dresses

The next morning, I went to my parent’s home in Sheikh Radwan, braced for what I would find because I knew, our neighbours had already sent us photos – the house was still there, but gutted by fire.

We were informed that the Israeli army had been stationed there for a while before lighting it as they withdrew.

A soldier ate a McDonald’s sandwich in my newlywed brother’s living room while watching the neighboring homes burn, according to a video that we discovered on TikTok.

I walked into the house, engulfed in a slew of memories that had vanished into rubble and ash. Only one room had survived the fire: my parents ‘ bedroom. The fire hadn’t touched it.

I stepped into my mother’s room. During the war, my mother passed away on May 7.

Her clothes still hung in the closet, embroidered dresses untouched by flames. Her belongings, her Quran, her prayer chair – everything remained, only coated in heavy dust and shattered glass.

Everything paled in comparison to the moment I stood before my late mother’s wardrobe, tears welling as I gently retrieved her dresses, brushing off the dust.

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

I grabbed my phone and called my sister, still in the south, my voice trembling between sobs and joy: “I found Mama’s embroidered dresses. I found her clothes! They didn’t burn”!

She gasped with happiness, immediately announcing that she would run to the north the next morning to see our mother’s belongings.

This is what life has become here – rubble everywhere, and yet we rejoice over any fragment, any thread that connects us to the past.

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

Not the Gaza I knew

Two days later, after sifting through wreckage and memories, I forced myself to step outside of my grief.

I decided to visit the Baptist Hospital in the morning, hoping to meet fellow journalists, regain some sense of self and attempt to work on new stories.

I walked for a long time, unable to find transportation. After Israel’s bombs had destroyed buildings, all that was left was dust. Soon, all that was left was dust.

Every passer-by was the same, coated in layers of grey from head to toe, eyelashes weighed down by debris.

People were removing the debris from their homes right in front of me. As men and women shovelled rubble and dust billowing through the air, sputtering entire streets, men and women rained down the sand from collapsed upper floors.

A woman approached me and inquired about recharging her phone credit. I hesitated, then blurted out: “I’m sorry, Auntie, I’m new here… I don’t know”.

I walked away, shocked at my response. This was no longer the Gaza I knew, and my subconscious had accepted it.

I used to know Gaza by heart. Every street – al-Jalaa, Shati Camp, Sheikh Radwan, Remal, al-Jundi. I knew all the back roads, every market, every famous bakery, every restaurant, every café. I knew exactly where to find the best cakes, the most elegant clothes, the branches of telecom companies, the internet service providers.

But now?

Now, there were no landmarks left. No street signs. No points of reference. Does this matter anymore?

I continued walking down al-Jalaa Street, struggling to place the past upon the ruins. Sometimes I succeeded, sometimes I took a picture to study later, to compare it with what once was.

North and south

Finally, I found a car heading my way. In the front seat, the driver gestured for me to sit next to a woman. In the back, five other women and a child were squeezed together.

Along the way, the driver picked up yet another passenger, cramming him into the last available space.

In my mind, every situation felt like an error.

My memories of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir el-Balah, where hospitals have been the only places with electricity and internet since the war started, resound.

The faces changed this time, and it became clear that the north’s journalists had handled this war in a very different way from ours.

I moved hesitantly through the corridors, whenever we encountered a journalist, I whispered to Abdelhakim: “Is this person from the north? Or did they travel to the south with us?

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

Yes, there was death and destruction in the south, Israel had not spared Rafah, Deir el-Balah or Khan Younis. However, people in Gaza City and northern Gaza had endured pain to the extent that we did not.

My face lit up when I recognized a colleague from the south and sat down in agreement with them as they walked down the aisle, eager to talk. They asked about their first encounter with the city and the moment they saw their family homes.

That was when I truly understood: We felt like strangers in our own city.

The struggle to belong again

The people of Gaza were also impacted by Israel’s war, which had also altered the landscape there. We were severing ourselves in ways that we had never imagined as new identities had been created.

A bitter, aching truth – we lost Gaza, over and over again, its people, its spirit, ourselves.

We believed that displacement was the worst nightmare for 15 months, and that exile would be the cruelest experience. People wept for home, dreaming only of return.

But now, return seems far more merciless. In the south, we were called “displaced”. In the north, we are now “returnees”, the people who stayed blaming us for leaving when the evacuation orders came.

Sometimes, we blame ourselves too. What choice, however, did we have?

And now we carry a quiet shame: a small, unspoken mark that has persisted in our hearts since leaving, and that is evident in the actions of those who remained.

I had imagined the day we returned north would mark the end of the war but, wandering the devastated streets, I realised: I’m still waiting for that end, the moment when we can say: “This chapter of bloodshed is over”.

I long to put the final period, so we might begin again – even if the beginning is painful. &nbsp, But there is no period. No closure. No end.

I drag myself forward, dust clinging to my clothes that I don’t bother to shake off. Tears mix with the rubble, and I do not wipe them away.

The reality is that we’ve been abandoned to an open-ended fate, a road with no direction: We are lost. &nbsp, We have no strength left to rebuild. No energy to start again.

We have lost this city, my friends.

The Gaza we loved and knew has died – defeated, severed and alone.

Source: Aljazeera