The scent of martyrs has returned to my city once again.

Those scenes I despise—mothers bidding farewell to their children near the morgue refrigerators, wives weeping over their husbands who were on their way to prayer, and a mother crying as she says her children died of hunger.

As for me, my friends abroad kept asking me how I was, and I didn’t know how to describe what I felt. Should I tell them that I can no longer bear this death and destruction? Or should I tell them that I will wake up once again to hear news of my loved ones in the Ministry of Health statistics while I continue to insist that they are not just numbers? Who would understand me then?

Will I go back to packing my bags again, asking myself the question I always avoid: What will you take with you, Noor? Should I take both summer and winter clothes this time, or should I take my books the library, where I kept everything I’ve read? Should I take Darwish’s book? Or Hussein Barghouti’s book? But this time, I will certainly not forget to take my journal, where I recorded all my teenage years.

However, other questions haunt me like ghosts: Will the house remain standing, or will I lose it? Will I live in a tent again? Will I get sick again and suffer from hepatitis once more? I have no answers to these questions. Perhaps these very questions can tell you how I feel.

On the night of Ramadan 18th, at 2:17 a.m. 

I woke up in panic—I heard a sound like an explosion or bombing. But when I slept it was calm, with no death or blood.

I woke up to the sound of ambulances, the cries of mothers from the neighbors, and the screams of children.

This scene continued for half an hour, and then the news came:

“The resumption of war on the Gaza Strip.”

That morning, people woke up to evacuation orders from places they hadn’t even settled in yet.

I know this scene well and have memorized it by heart—let me not repeat it.

But I will say that if you put yourself in the place of those people, you would wish for death instead of displacement because that would be a thousand times easier.

Scenes of schools filled with displaced people—the word “displaced” has returned, and the question has resurfaced:

Where do we go?

My mother stopped a woman walking with fear written all over her face. She was recounting what had happened in Beit Hanoun and the evacuation orders they had received.

She said, “We are fasting and exhausted, and here we are looking for a place to sleep. Where do we go? We had barely settled.”

A Soul That Cannot Forget Its pain 

Eva, a 19-year-old girl who has been living through the war since its first day on October 7, shared her story with me since learning about the resumption of fire. Eva says,  At first, it was unbearable. The wounds of war had not yet healed. The word ‘unbearable’ isn’t even the right word—it was shocking. When we heard the sounds, we rushed to the safest place in our house. But I wasn’t the one running—it was the shock, the shock we never had a chance to recover from.

I felt nothing. I thought that was a good thing—until it was over. Only then did everything hit me in a way I could never have imagined. A choking grip clutched my chest. Breathing was difficult. I wasn’t there—I was just lying on the couch, trying to comprehend what had just happened. I was stuck in the past, where emotions were too heavy to bear, where seeking help brought no answers, where we were forced to face feelings we couldn’t escape, because death was everywhere.

I felt the world turn gray. I felt weak. I looked at the building across from our home,

and I imagined what would happen if it were bombed at that moment.

What would happen to me?

To my body, to my family, to my home, to my entire existence?

Then I realized—I didn’t really care.

I was too weak to care.

I turned my face away,

ignoring the fact that if my nightmare came true and became a reality, I would be finished. And yet, I wouldn’t have cared.

That’s what I felt. No tears. No sadness. No desire to survive.

Just pure exhaustion.

A weight so heavy, even this entire city couldn’t carry my heart.

And this isn’t even the end. It can’t be.

Eva added in the end: “Stop talking about Gazans not deserving a second genocide—Gazans didn’t deserve one in the first place. We thrive for a chance to heal, and we don’t want the war to happen again.”

Eva’s words were a mirror of what we all feel here in Gaza. We are living in a constant whirlpool of fear, where even temporary safety feels like a mirage.

The fear of hunger, of displacement, of becoming mere numbers in an endless list.

The fear of hunger returning is real.

Markets are now filled not with goods, but with people, and prices are constantly rising.

Everyone is thinking about securing bags of flour, sugar, and some legumes for their families.

The solution to the hunger crisis now lies in the decision to open the Kerem Shalom crossing, which feels like a wolf sinking its fangs into everyone in the city.

And in the end, I want to say:

We have returned to the feeling of helplessness.

A father’s helplessness to protect his children from death.

And the helplessness when you wake up to find yourself under rubble and F-16 bombs, screaming to the world, yet only those in the heavens can hear you.