By Rita Baroud
IT has been almost three weeks since the ceasefire – as the media are calling it – began, and I still cannot believe it. I cannot believe that the war has stopped, even temporarily. I cannot believe that we survived 15 months of hell. I cannot believe that I am still here. But the past weeks have also not brought the relief we dreamed of nor the sense of security we longed for.
We waited for this day for so long. It was supposed to be a turning point, a new beginning, or at the very least, a pause where I could breathe and process what had happened. But some wars are not fought with weapons alone; they continue within us after the bombing stops, reshaping us against our will.
The first morning, on Sunday, 19 January, I woke up to a silence I do not trust. The silence was supposed to be a blessing, but it feels more like a deception – an empty space between rounds of death. It is not comforting but heavy and suffocating, as if we are all holding our breath, waiting for something unknown.
There has been no return to normal life. Shop owners did not open their doors with a smile; People did not rush to the markets to buy the items they need, as if nothing had happened. Destruction is not erased with the push of a button; the dead do not come back to life; buildings leveled to the ground do not rebuild themselves just because a political agreement has been signed. The sun rises, but it does not bring hope – its light only exposes more ruin.
That first morning, I lost the ability to believe that the future might hold something different. My feet remain trapped in the rubble. My eyes still see dust rising on the horizon. My ears still hear the last explosions. I expected to cry, to finally release all the grief that has accumulated inside me over the past 15 months, to allow myself – even for a moment – to face my losses without the interruption of bombardments or the urgency of survival.
But, now, what I feel is nothing. No overwhelming grief. No joy. No relief. Not even fear. Just an endless void, swallowing me slowly. It feels as if I am walking in a world suspended between a past that hasn’t ended and a future I cannot see.
Everything around me suggests that the life we once knew is over, that what we are living now is nothing but the remnants of life – fragments of a reality that no longer exists. The question that never leaves me is: If this is what relief looks like, then what does the pain feel like? Can we build a life from beneath the rubble? Will we be allowed? Or does war leave us with nothing but ashes?
Uncertain decisions
For now, my family and I have moved to another house in the same area of Deir al-Balah where we’ve been staying for months. The heaviest decision weighing on us now is whether to return to northern Gaza. Over half a million people have gone back. But I know that my home in Gaza City was destroyed three days after the war began. When I think about going back to see it – even just the rubble – I find myself hesitating. I don’t want to see it. I know there is nothing left. I’m already carrying enough painful memories inside.
Should we leave this house, which has become our refuge, or should we go? How do we decide in the midst of such chaos and uncertainty? There is no clear answer. Every possibility carries risks, and every choice feels incomplete, and fragile, just like everything else in our lives.
Those who returned to the north – who longed to go back despite everything – found themselves facing a reality they could never have imagined: total destruction; scattered corpses; skulls with no names; and no roads leading anywhere.
Even in Deir al-Balah, we are surrounded by devastation. We spend hours talking about it every day. The city that once pulsed with life has turned into ruins, and the homes that once sheltered their residents are now either crumbling walls or scattered debris. We talk about the rising cost of rent, as if displacement was not enough, as if the war had not already taken too much from us.
I have been trying to move around, to visit different places to convince myself that there is a truce, to try to feel it. But how can I feel it while drones are still hovering over my head? The buzzing sound reminds me that the sky is not ours, that even the air is under surveillance.
Sometimes I stay in bed for hours thinking: What should I do today? Is there even a ‘day’ in any real sense? Is there a routine I can reclaim? I get up slowly, move around, and step outside – not because I want to but because I don’t want to be alone with my thoughts.
But when I walk through the streets, I feel like a stranger in a place I once knew so well. There are empty spaces that didn’t exist before – parts of the city that have been completely erased.
Amongst the rubble
Food is still an unending daily conversation. In the markets, I hear vendors calling out their goods. I hear bargaining. I see shy smiles here and there – attempts to normalise our abnormal reality.
There are more goods available now. Chicken and eggs have become abundant. Fruits and vegetables are suddenly everywhere. Chocolate has returned to the shelves. Prices have come down, but not by much. They still eat away at what little remains of our savings.
I saw a child sitting alone – not playing, not running. He was holding small stones in his hands, stacking them on top of each other. I approached him and asked, “What are you doing?” He looked at me and said, “I’m rebuilding our house.”
Seeing this strange abundance makes me feel that something is off as if it’s an attempt to convince the hungry that their hunger was never real, that basic necessities were not deliberately kept from us in a systematic policy that turned hunger into another weapon of war. But the truth is clear – it is carved into the shattered walls, reflected in the sleepless eyes, and written in the names that are still being added to the lists of the dead.
In the streets, I see children playing amongst the rubble as if they no longer see destruction as something unusual. Some turn stones into toys or make balls out of scraps of cloth. Some run as they always did, but their eyes constantly glance up at the sky as if making sure that nothing will suddenly fall on them.
Another thing I’ve noticed is that some children have started playing ‘war’. I hear them imitating the sounds of planes; I see one holding a stick, pretending it is a rifle and another raising his hands as if he is a prisoner. At another moment, I saw a child sitting alone – not playing, not running. He was holding small stones in his hands, stacking them on top of each other. I approached him and asked, “What are you doing?” He looked at me and said, “I’m rebuilding our house.”
The silent, internal war
I feel the weight of the names of people I used to speak with every day. Now, I spell them out on the shattered walls, searching for them in the long lists of the missing. Two of my best friends were killed, and we don’t know where my uncle is. Even if he was killed, we don’t know where his body is.
Many other friends and people I know managed to leave through the Rafah border crossing before Israel took it over at the beginning of May last year. How can I rejoice when my friends are in exile, wandering between places that do not belong to them and across borders that do not recognise them, carrying their shattered homeland with them?
Can my emotions heal? Can I regain my ability to feel life as I once did? Or will I remain like this – trapped in this void, unable to feel joy, unable to feel sorrow, just a shadow moving through a world that is no longer familiar?
How can I rest when my home was destroyed? How can I seek reassurance when I have no place left to return to? How can I regain a sense of security when everything I once considered “mine” has become nothing but a memory?
Is it normal to see the remains of my loved ones among the rubble, to see skulls, remnants of souls that once pulsed with life?
My hands haven’t stopped trembling at every loud noise, as if my body still lives in those long nights under fire, in those moments when the thin line separating life from death blurred.
Now, I am fighting a psychological war no less brutal than the one we lived under the bombs. The only difference is that this war is silent – no one hears it, no one sees it – but it carves into us slowly, leaving scars invisible to the eye, yet deepening with every passing day. I know that everyone in Gaza is fighting this war too, each in their own way.
I don’t want anyone to simplify this pain with prepackaged words, as if suffering can be explained, organised, or reduced to medical consultations and rehearsed advice. How can something like this be normal?
Is it normal to see the remains of my loved ones among the rubble, to see skulls, remnants of souls that once pulsed with life? How can I convince myself that my home, the place that sheltered me for 20 years, is now a pile of stones and that this is just something I must accept?
The truth no one wants to hear is that some things cannot be healed. Some losses are irreplaceable, some scars never close, some feelings can never be recovered, and some wars continue even after they are declared over.
How can we believe?
I am now immersed in trying to tell the world not to stop talking about Gaza, not to be deceived by this fragile truce, not to think that the resilience they are seeing is a choice. We are not resilient; we are forced into this state.
The massacres have stopped, and that is the most significant change that has happened. But even as I write these words, I feel like I am lying. How have the massacres ended when we are still bidding farewell to the sick? We are still adding their names – including that of my friend’s mother – to the ever-growing list of martyrs.
The Rafah border crossing has opened, but what meaning does that have when only a few dozen injured and sick people are allowed to leave each day when those trying to leave are treated like mere numbers in a cruel equation while the rest remain trapped here?
How can I believe when Israeli soldiers are still shooting at civilians; when civil defence workers are still digging through the rubble with their bare hands because heavy machinery is not being allowed in, searching for 14,000 lost souls? How is there a difference when they speak of humanitarian aid but I still see hungry children and hear their cries at night? Now, the president of the United States is talking about ethnically cleansing us from our land and stealing it.
That is why I fear this “calm” more than the bombings – because I know what we face now will be harder, more painful, and more exhausting. I try to convince myself that this is just a phase and that one day I will be able to feel something other than this emptiness. But I do not know how or when. War drains you physically, but what comes after drains your soul.
Edited by Eric Reidy.
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The New Humanitarian puts quality, independent journalism at the service of the millions of people affected by humanitarian crises around the world. Find out more at www.thenewhumanitarian.org.
