By Rita Baroud
SINCE I last wrote for The New Humanitarian, I finally returned to northern Gaza, where I grew up and lived all of my life before this war. There was no plan, no prior thought. The decision was spontaneous, even though we had been debating whether to go to the north for weeks.
It was as if something was pulling me back to what remained of my old life even though I knew our home no longer existed – that it had been turned into rubble like thousands of others. Something stronger than logic made me want to see it with my own eyes.
So, on 8 February, my father, my mother, my sister, and I started walking north along Al-Rashid Street, which runs up Gaza’s coastline. There were other people walking too, but not the same huge numbers as when Israel first allowed people to return at the end of January.
The walk north wasn’t just a journey; it was a test of how much a person can endure. The road was long, vehicles were scarce, and when we finally found one to give us a ride, all I could see was ash. A grey colour swallowed everything: There was no difference between the ground and the sky.
I tried to document it, to take photos, but my hands were shaking – not from the cold but from the horror of what I saw. The pictures didn’t capture the magnitude of the destruction because what was in front of me was beyond what a lens could contain.
On my right, Gaza’s cities and neighbourhoods lay in ruins – every building was either tilted, shattered, or reduced to a heap of stones. On my left, the sea raged, its waves high and angry. I tried to fix my gaze on the sea, to escape the devastation, but my eyes kept stealing glances to the right, searching for traces of my past life – for proof that we had been here once.
The visit was supposed to last one day, but I stayed until 20 February. I don’t know why. I went to my neighbourhood, al-Rimal al-Shamali, to where my house once stood. It didn’t look the same as when it was first destroyed: It had changed even as rubble. The moisture and bulldozers had worn it down further, erasing even the ruins.
My family and I were nearly buried under that pile of rubble on the third day of the war. Luckily, we had left our house before a missile hit on 9 October 2023, engulfing it in flames and partially destroying it. My father and I ran back to the house to search for my cat, Sarah, who we had left behind; but we couldn’t find her. Just after we left, a second missile hit, collapsing the rest of the house as I stood there, at a distance, watching it turn into rubble.
That was my home for 20 years, where I lived with my grandmother, my uncle and his children, and my family. The house had five storeys. Inside, it was a warm and safe place that held all of us together. My room was my little sanctuary – my own small world filled with books, music, and TV shows. Our balcony was covered with cactus plants. I used to spend time there just sitting and reflecting.
As I looked at the pile of rubble in February, I felt a crushing weight in my chest, but it was brief. I didn’t let myself linger; I didn’t let my eyes absorb the scene. I just walked away quickly, as if running from it again.
A mockery of return
I went to the North because I felt I had to see what was left of my past. But the streets I walked did not resemble the ones I knew. Nothing was familiar. I searched for any sign that I had once been here. Nothing remained. Even the few things that had survived and managed to reopen were different.
Life in my neighbourhood before the war was peaceful, with a sense of stability and routine. Our neighbours were always around, and there was a strong sense of community – people knew each other, greeted each other daily, and shared moments of joy and sorrow.
The streets were lively, lined with trees and shops with everything we needed. There were schools, cafes, and small businesses. Children played outside in the afternoons, families gathered on balconies in the evenings, and the sounds of life – conversations, laughter, and the call to prayer – were always present.
Now, all of that is gone. Wherever I went, everything was collapsed. The destruction was so complete that it felt like a miracle to see a house still standing at all. People were trying to cope with the catastrophe, but there was no water, no electricity, no sanitation, no roads. Only rubble and sand.
Because transportation was too expensive, I walked for hours each day through different neighbourhoods and to the sea, working on articles and trying to reconnect with my memories. I averaged 12 kilometres per day – 16,000 steps – on broken roads until my feet swelled and I couldn’t sleep from the pain.
The markets I used to visit, the familiar shops – all of them were without windows, partially destroyed, but still trying to stay open. Some cafés and restaurants had resumed business, but I couldn’t see it as a sign of recovery. It felt more like a mockery – an attempt to create the illusion that life had returned when everything around us screamed that Gaza had not healed and would not heal anytime soon.
A sky without sun
February was difficult. We didn’t see the sun. I stopped being able to remember the last time I woke up to natural light slipping through the window. The air was heavy – not just with humidity, but with the sense that everything was on the verge of collapse.
The rain kept falling but washed away nothing. It didn’t bring new beginnings; it only added more chapters to our suffering. The winter cold felt like a slow death seeping into your bones.
Gaza was drowning in puddles, but no one saw their reflection in them because the water wasn’t clear. It was mixed with mud, with debris, with the remnants of war. The roads were no longer walkable, water gathered without drainage, turning into stagnant swamps filled with unexplainable smells, like the war tainted even the rainwater with death.
Inside the tents that fill the camps, the situation was worse. Nothing was dry. Clothes remained damp at all times; mattresses absorbed so much water they turned into rotting sponges. Children huddled beneath wet blankets that provided no warmth, their small bodies trembling without rest. Mothers tried to light small fires to cook, but the wood was too wet, and smoke filled the tents instead of warmth.
It’s not surprising that at least six newborn babies died in the cold. The rain can kill, just like the bombs.
When I finally returned to the south, there was an extremely thin woman sitting next to me in the vehicle I took. She was about 60 years old and pale as if she had not felt warmth in years. She only wore a very thin black abaya. She did not speak or cry or ask for anything. She only repeated one word in a weak, trembling voice: “Cold”.
Without thinking, I took off my jacket and handed it to her. I did not look into her eyes, because I knew that what I would see there would be unbearable. I did not need to look to know the pain. It was there in the way her hands trembled as she took the jacket, in how she clung to it like it was life itself, in the shivering that didn’t stop even after she covered herself.
Her cold settled inside me. It wasn’t just winter’s cold – it was the cold of loss, the cold of helplessness, the cold of watching someone’s body waste away from hunger and daily hardship, slowly, until they lose their will and spirit; it was the cold of realising that all you can give is a piece of clothing, as if that could fix what war has shattered, what hunger has ruined, what the siege had stolen from her frail body.
Ramadan under siege
Now I’m back in Deir al-Balah, in the same partially broken house where my family has been sheltering for months. Ramadan began on 1 March. For the second year in a row, it does not resemble any Ramadan we knew before.
In the past, we would prepare for this month weeks in advance. Markets would be full, families would gather, children would rejoice with lanterns, and the scent of food would fill the streets. But this year, none of that exists.
On the second day of Ramadan, Israel closed the border crossings, preventing any humanitarian aid from entering. We were already being strangled. Now, the grip is even tighter. They are blocking the entry of food, fuel, water – everything that we need to survive.
As soon as the aid suspension was announced, Gaza’s merchants began hoarding supplies. In a single night, prices skyrocketed to unimaginable levels. Markets were filled with desperate shoppers, each trying to buy whatever they could before prices became completely unaffordable.
In Gaza, we live in a different kind of financial system – a market where prices rise every second, not based on supply and demand but on the level of suffering. The tighter the siege, the higher the prices, until food becomes a rare commodity out of reach for many.
Before the war, Ramadan meant family visits, large iftar gatherings, conversations that stretched until suhoor, and evenings spent with friends in cafés. It meant warmth, life, and a sense of belonging to something greater.
Now, families are scattered between the north and south. Some have left altogether. Many have been martyred. There are no more Ramadan feasts bringing families together; no more children laughing as they wait for the call to prayer. Some families break their fast with the little food they have left – maybe a piece of bread, a cup of water, or a bit of rice, if they’re lucky. Others have nothing at all and settle for water or sleep to escape hunger.
In some areas, people try to organise communal iftars – not because they have plenty of food, but because sharing hunger feels less cruel than facing it alone. In the camps, mothers sit with their children, trying to distract them from thinking about food. Some tell them stories, some sing to them, and some promise that tomorrow might be better. But no one here truly believes that tomorrow will be any different from today.
Where do we go now?
No one knows what the coming days will bring. No one knows whether the war has truly ended or if we are simply waiting for the next round. Some believe that Gaza can no longer endure – but it is still here.
The real question is not: How do we keep living? It is: How long can this last before everything collapses? No one knows; No one has a real answer. Everything here is temporary; everything is fragile. This is not life – it is a long, suspended waiting, caught between fear and meaninglessness. There is no war and no peace – just this heavy silence.
Children still wake up screaming from nightmares, hiding under blankets as they did during the bombings. Mothers still keep their bags ready by the door, filled with blankets, documents, and extra clothes.
In the streets of the city, nothing moves fast. In some neighbourhoods, the smell of death still lingers. The buildings that were destroyed have not been cleared away completely, and some still hold bodies beneath their rubble, waiting to be retrieved.
Clean drinking water is rare. In the camps, people collect rainwater, but no one trusts that it’s safe. Some families boil it before drinking, but fuel is scarce, and no one can afford the luxury of making a fire for everything. Children suffer from diarrhoea due to contaminated water, but there is no medicine and the hospitals can do nothing.
Inside the hospitals, the situation defies description. Surgeons operate without anaesthesia, patients die from infections that could have been easily treated if antibiotics were available. Malnourished children lie on cold metal beds, their bones protruding, their eyes sunken into tiny skulls, while their mothers sit beside them, powerless, able to do nothing but wait.
During the day, we move without a clear purpose, trying to convince ourselves that we are still alive and that the days have not lost all meaning. And at night, when the streets fall silent when the noise of the survivors fades, the real questions creep in:
Are we still ourselves? Are we still the people we were before all this? Or has the war reshaped us, erased us, turned us into ghosts wandering a city that no longer recognises itself?
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.
