In Gaza, winter is not just a season

THE winter cold has arrived in Gaza, bringing with it a harsh reminder of how fragile life has become. Gaza is now unbearably chaotic. Nothing functions. There is no order, no safety, nothing to make us feel that life could ever be normal again. The streets are filled with debris. Destroyed buildings stand as monuments to all that we’ve lost. Water is scarce. The electricity is still cut off. Imagine being made to live for more than 15 months with no electricity.

The simplest necessities – food, medicine, a moment of rest – are almost impossible to obtain. Our hunger has gotten worse with the biting cold. Children who once played in the streets now sit silently in the ruins of their homes. The vibrant sounds of life that once filled every corner of this small, crowded territory have been replaced by explosions and the relentless noise of drones that never leave our skies.

We don’t have enough food. I see mothers trying to bargain for a handful of lentils or beans, their voices breaking as they attempt to negotiate prices they cannot afford.

December was very difficult here. Will January be any better? I have little hope. Winter is harsh. It’s not just a season but a cruel test of the body and soul. The nights are longer and heavier on our hearts. The cold doesn’t knock on doors; it forces its way in uninvited, creeping through cracks in bomb-damaged walls. The wind whistles through holes left by shrapnel as if nature is weeping over our losses.

The rain isn’t cleansing; it floods fragile tents and turns the ground into mud, leaving children shivering under the torn fabric that offers no protection.

Blankets are a rare luxury. We huddle together at night for warmth, wearing every piece of clothing we can find. The cold still finds us, and we shiver until morning. We are lucky, living within four walls. What about the hundreds of thousands living in tents?

I ask myself every day: How do we survive all of this? How can humans endure so much pain and misery? Illness, hunger, cold, nothing but fear of the future – no promise of a new horizon or glimpse of hope for the future. Only chaos that devours everything.

I dread evenings the most. Every night, the fading sky’s light brings a heavy feeling that something is deeply wrong. My thoughts multiply like small monsters creeping out of the corners of my mind. I cannot escape them; they replay scenes of destruction, days of hunger, and my fears for tomorrow.

Every emotion sharpens at night: hunger feels harsher, the cold more brutal, and my anxiety swells into an unending nightmare while I am still awake.

If December killed the last remnants of hope, what will January bring? Will there be a new year waiting for us, or has time for those of us living in Gaza been frozen in this endless chaos and violence?

I have aged beyond my years

As I write these words, I sit in a dimly lit corner of a crumbling house in Deir al-Balah. It’s the same house I wrote about in August in a previous article for The New Humanitarian. At that time, my family and I had been forcibly displaced 12 times. Now, that number is up to 14.

I turned 22 in November, but I have aged beyond my years. It has left me no chance to have the experiences someone my age should be having.

After our last displacement at the beginning of September, we chose to return to this house despite it being even more damaged than the last time we stayed here. The only other option was going to the tents, which flood and do not provide protection from the cold and rain.

I don’t know how long we will stay here this time. Even though I’ve been here before, everything around me feels unfamiliar. The amount of destruction spreading out in every direction has doubled. In the winter, it’s even more gloomy. I don’t feel comfortable. I feel like a stranger even to myself. I feel like I am drowning. My mental health is not okay.

I turned 22 in November, but I have aged beyond my years. I feel like I am carrying the burdens of someone who is much older. The war is robbing me of the prime of my youth. It has left me no chance to have the experiences someone my age should be having.

I was supposed to have graduated university by now. I wanted to travel abroad to pursue a master’s degree. I wanted to explore the world. Someone my age is supposed to live a stable life without burdens. I was supposed to be practising sports and building a future for myself.

Instead, I have found myself in the midst of this genocide. I am living in the body of a young woman with a soul exhausted by nightmares and worries.

Reality is always harsh

My days begin at dawn, when I open my eyes with the false hope that one day I will wake up to find the walls of my room as they once were – adorned with photos narrating the memories of my life before the war; memories of laughter and of my small dreams.

But reality is always harsh. The first thing I see is the grey wall in front of me. There are no pictures, just chalk marks recording dates so I don’t lose track of the passage of time.

Sometimes, I wake up and find a small mouse waiting for me by the wall. I neither scream nor fear it. I’ve grown used to its presence. It has become a companion sharing this prison with me. Perhaps it too is searching for an escape, for a less cruel life.

Each new day is a bitter repetition of the one before it. All I see are grey walls. The sounds of bombing and drones haunt me even in my sleep.

The first thing I do when I wake up is instinctively reach for my hair, cautiously feeling it as if to check it is still there. My hair has been falling out because of malnutrition due to the lack of food and the state of constant fear and worry I live in. Each strand I find scattered on my pillow or tangled in my fingers is like another part of myself I have lost. It’s as if the war, unsatisfied with destroying the outside world, has begun consuming me from within.

Each new day is a bitter repetition of the one before it. All I see are grey walls. The sounds of bombing and drones haunt me even in my sleep. I begin each day by trying to prepare myself both physically and emotionally. I sip a bit of water – if there is any – and think about the small steps I can take to make it through the day: listening to some music; going out for a walk, even though I hate seeing all of the destruction; writing; reading something; doing anything to distract me from my thoughts.

There is no plan, no goal, just survival.

Bread has become like gold

I’ve made a few friends since the last time we were displaced: two cats, Simsim and Susu. Simsim is grey and carries the wounds from a harsh life. His paw is injured, and he allows no one to come near him. Susu – a white cat with splashes of orange and black in her fur – is the opposite. She playfully jumps towards me as if trying to comfort me even a little bit.

Since we came back here, I have made it a habit of feeding them every morning. I look for them in the corners of the rubble where they hide. I don’t have much to give them because we too suffer from hunger, but I split half a loaf of bread, soaking it in water or in the brine of canned tuna or peas, if those items are available.

Seeing Simsim and Susu every morning gives me a sense of solace. Their presence makes me feel that I am not completely alone and that some kind of life still exists amidst all this wreckage.

But the moment of calm I have in the morning with Simsim and Susu is soon shattered by the beginning of our daily battle for survival. The first questions are always: What do we have for breakfast? Will we be able to eat more than one meal today, or will we have to survive on just one like usual?

Between me, my sister, my parents, my cousins, and my uncle, there are 14 of us in the house. We repeat the conversation about food every day. It’s a continuous confrontation with the poverty and hunger that pursue us relentlessly. “Ration the bread. Don’t eat too much,” my mother says, constantly anxious we will run out.

Bread has become like gold – rare and precious. Flour is unavailable, and when we are able to find some, it costs 70 shekels (almost $20) for one kilo. Despite being exorbitantly expensive, the flour is unfit for human consumption. It’s filled with mould, weevils, and worms. We are forced to use it because we have no alternative.

When we find a loaf of bread, we eat it plain because we don’t have anything to put on it. If we are lucky enough to have the luxury, we might add a bit of oil and thyme, pretending it is a feast.

The markets are desolate. There are no goods, no choices, only tired faces searching for anything to stave off hunger. All of this is due to the closure of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt back in May. It was our only lifeline. Some items make it in through the Karem Abu Salem (Kerem Shalom) crossing from Israel, but they are sold at unbelievably high prices.

The most commonly available items are canned food, instant noodles, feta cheese, and some basic vegetables, like potatoes and tomatoes. There is no chicken or meat, or if they are available they are sold at outrageously high prices. I haven’t eaten eggs or meat or chicken in four months. I haven’t drunk milk for five months. I haven’t had a sweet of any kind for eight months.

The damage is beyond physical

We are trapped in a massive prison. The skies above us are surveilled by drones. The sea in front of us is patrolled by Israeli warships, and the ground we stand on is filled with rubble and death. Even our imaginations – once a refuge – have become a prison. When I try to imagine something beautiful, my thoughts are flooded instead with the images of a child who froze to death or the cries of a father mourning his children.

Our days are a never-ending series of challenges. We have made a schedule to decide who will light the clay oven for cooking or baking bread. Even this simple oven, which has become the pillar of our existence, requires significant effort to keep functioning.

Then comes the struggle to find water, which is the most difficult of all. Each person has an extremely limited daily quota: one and a half litres of fresh water for drinking and cooking; and just one litre for cleaning and washing. Everything here is rationed, every drop is measured. There is no room for luxuries. Bathing has become a rarity, and washing clothes is another battle that requires careful planning. Every decision is tied to survival. We are barely alive in a harsh world that leaves us no space to breathe.

Around noon I sometimes decide to try to escape. I go for a walk in the nearby streets. They are hauntingly quiet and lined with bombed-out buildings, shattered glass, and broken concrete. Dust hangs in the air, mixing with the acrid smell of burned debris. Here and there, remnants of people’s lives – clothes, furniture, toys – peek out from the wreckage. The walls that still stand are riddled with holes or blackened by fire. Every corner holds a story of loss and tragedy.

Walking the streets is dangerous. Unexploded ordnance might be hidden beneath the rubble, and the constant whir of drones overhead is a reminder of the precariousness of each step. I head to the market to see if there’s anything new available – if anything can still be found – but the stalls are nearly empty as people wander around with exhausted faces.

I try to hold myself together but often find myself breaking down. The damage is beyond physical – it has seeped into the soul.

These days, our suffering has doubled. Hunger gnaws at our bodies. The little food we manage to find is no longer enough, and prices are higher than ever before. Despite everything, I keep walking, searching for a small glimmer of hope to restore even a tiny piece of the life I’ve lost.

I’m not the only one

I’ve been sick for weeks now. Fever clings to me like a heavy companion. My body is exhausted, groaning under the weight of pain. My bones ache. My head feels like it’s about to explode. I’m not the only one. Almost everyone in Gaza is sick because of the cold.

The simplest things we once took for granted – like painkillers that reduce fever – have become distant dreams, added to the long list of things we lack under this suffocating siege. Some people can’t even afford to drink hot beverages.

Still, I find myself thanking God, not because I am well, but because it could have been worse. I feel lucky that fever is my only ailment. Praise be to God that I still have my limbs. Gaza has the largest number of child amputees in modern history – children who lost their hands before they could write their names and young people who lost their legs before they could chase their dreams. The medical system that could treat these children has also been destroyed. It hobbles along with resources choked off and doctors exhausted by this endless war, or killed or detained by Israel.

Every moment, I live with an indescribable anguish – that our suffering has become normal; that the world sees us only as numbers, not as souls being broken each and every day.

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.