By Rita Baroud
I did not think leaving Gaza was possible. I had lost hope after the Rafah border crossing with Egypt was taken over by Israel and shut down at the beginning of May last year. But after nearly 570 days of war and siege and forced starvation, on 23 April, my family and I were among 115 Palestinians evacuated as part of a French programme providing protection to scientists and artists.
The final weeks I spent in Gaza were the hardest of the entire war. Hunger was no longer a fleeting feeling. It had become a state of being, inhabiting our bodies, reshaping our language, dictating the rhythm of our days. The opportunity to leave came unexpectedly, like a small window opening in the midst of darkness. But I also didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to be safe while others were still starving, still being bombed, still trying to survive.
Even as the days grew heavier and my body more emaciated, I kept telling myself: “Not yet. Not while Gaza is still collapsing. Not while there are still stories that need to be written – people counting their only remaining loaves of bread and burying their loved ones in silence.”
Leaving felt like abandoning my people and betraying everything I believed in. Staying felt like a form of resistance. I wanted to keep writing, to bear witness, to share the little bit of flour we were able to find with a hungry neighbour, to survive for one more day.
This is the first part of the story of how I left – of what it feels like to be one of the arbitrarily chosen few to be given a path out of a genocide when your relatives, your friends, your community – almost everyone you care about – has no choice but to stay behind and continue to endure.
The darkest days
Those last weeks in Gaza, before I knew we were leaving, I stopped being able to remember what it felt like to be full. The idea of a “meal” became a memory. We were eating once a day – or not at all. And even that one time hurt. Every bite we took burned twice: once because we didn’t know when we would eat again, and once because we knew someone else didn’t even have that one bite.
There was no more wheat to make bread. We were grinding lentils, dry pasta, or rice just to produce something that resembled flour and that was edible when placed over the fire to cook. No one was concerned with taste anymore. What mattered was that it baked and filled the aching void in our stomachs.
This famine was not the result of a disaster, chronic poverty, or economic collapse. This hunger was a weapon. Israel wields the border crossings like a noose, tightening them around Gaza’s neck and watching death unfold from a distance. In March and April, nothing was getting in. No flour. No gas. No medicine. No water. The bakeries closed – one after another. Some were flattened by bombs. Others ran out of flour and fuel for their ovens. Some of their owners were killed.
Those who were not killed by bombs were facing death from hunger. And those trying to avoid death from hunger were humiliated every day, searching for something to feed their children. Their faces drained, eyes sunken in dark shadows.
The only thing allowed to enter Gaza was death, in all of its forms. Fast and slow. The sky remained open for drones, for warplanes, for missiles, as we were starved deliberately, precisely.
People’s faces grew pale – from waiting, from hunger, from fear, from humiliation. People’s strides grew slower, as if the air itself was heavy, as if the ground no longer wanted to carry us. People stopped laughing. They stopped singing. They stopped speaking as much. Murmurs replaced words, and silence stretched longer than conversations.
In alley corners, where trash bags piled up, you could see men, women, even children rummaging for scraps – potato peels, bones from old chicken, a mouldy piece of bread that could be washed, dried, and eaten.
Dignity? It became a luxury. Those who were not killed by bombs were facing death from hunger. And those trying to avoid death from hunger were humiliated every day, searching for something to feed their children. Their faces drained, eyes sunken in dark shadows. Extinguished. Their bodies are so thin that they look as if they might break. Even now, this starvation continues.
Waiting for what?
At that time, the idea of leaving felt like a distant rumour – too fragile to believe in, too dangerous to hope for. We didn’t have a fixed departure date. Whether we would leave at all was uncertain until the last moment. Like everyone else in Gaza, we were counting days like we counted drops of water, which had become so scarce. How many more days could we survive? How many did we have before the next airstrike? Before flour ran out? Before someone we loved collapsed from hunger?
We rationed loaves of bread, divided them among us, and waited. For what? Maybe a miracle. Maybe a painless death. Maybe just a moment of peace without the sound of planes, without needing to explain how we survive without food. Mass death had become a matter of time because nothing entered Gaza, and no one was coming to save it.
We stopped screaming because screaming requires energy. We stopped protesting because protests are no longer heard. We whispered, we sighed, we wrote – when we could – so that we were not erased in silence.
My father and I argued every day as we waited. He’d say that staying alive is also a kind of resistance, and I’d say that I can’t leave those who can’t leave. This isn’t a journey – it’s an uprooting.
When news finally came that the evacuation would actually happen, I didn’t believe it. It didn’t seem real. I thought I would feel relief, but it felt like the ground was falling out from under me. Mostly, I felt guilt and confusion. It felt like surviving a shipwreck while everyone I love is still drowning. I thought: “Why me? What right do I have to leave when so many others can’t?”
I resisted. My father and I argued every day as we waited. He’d say that staying alive is also a kind of resistance, and I’d say that I can’t leave those who can’t leave. This isn’t a journey – it’s an uprooting. He saw my fear. He saw how I was breaking inside. But he refused to let me burn with the rubble.
Silence and goodbyes
In those final days, everything was too loud and too silent. The skies were filled with drones and warplanes. The space around me was filled with unspoken farewells. My close friends, my aunts and uncles and cousins, they stopped asking questions. They would just look at me – that long, knowing look we give those we’re not sure we’ll ever see again. I didn’t say much. I smiled sometimes, a dry smile like stale bread. “It’s just a short trip,” I’d say, even though I knew I was lying. But I couldn’t face the truth that I was leaving everything behind.
I walked through the rubble searching for something – anything – to tie me to the person I used to be. Everything I found was broken, but I carried it in my heart.
A few days before we left, I went to visit our destroyed home in Gaza City – the home that held my childhood memories, my mother’s laughter, the smell of za’atar in the mornings. Now, it’s nothing but dust. I didn’t cry. I couldn’t. The sorrow was stuck somewhere deeper than tears. I walked through the rubble searching for something – anything – to tie me to the person I used to be. Everything I found was broken, but I carried it in my heart.
I worked harder than ever. I wrote, edited, conducted interviews, followed the news, and chased every story like it was my last. I tried to stretch each night as long as possible to delay the arrival of the morning I’d have to leave. Maybe I was running from thinking, from facing the truth, from admitting the end was near. Work was my refuge from the questions I didn’t know how to answer: Did I really want to leave? What if I stayed? Did I deserve this chance? Will I regret it?
One evening, I couldn’t bear it anymore. I called my friend, who is a doctor, the one I’ve written about meeting up with to share jokes and memories and to commiserate about what our lives had become. I told her I was about to leave. The words came out broken, as if I were asking forgiveness for a sin I was about to commit.
She is my closest friend. We had both stayed in Gaza when many of our friends left earlier, when Rafah was still open, and you could get out if you had enough money and were lucky enough to get on a list. We used to joke about our solitude, how so many others had left, and now I was leaving too, leaving the place we had learned to endure together.
When I told her, silence fell, as if the news needed time to reach the deepest part of her. Then she spoke, responding to my guilt. Her voice was full of anger, fear, and love: “Do you want Israel to kill you? Do you want to die? Is that what you want?”
She was trying to wake me up, to tell me this is not a betrayal. It’s survival. Painful survival, but necessary. She knew my heart didn’t want to leave, and she wanted to remind me that staying isn’t always bravery – it can be a deadly risk.
The call ended in silence. No farewells. No final words. Just a long sigh and a wave of sorrow stuck in my throat.
A few days later, we met. She came to Deir al-Balah, to the area where I’ve spent so much of my time living since being displaced. It was a short meeting but precious, as if time paused briefly to let us catch our breath together. She was the only one who could pull me out of the whirlpool of my thoughts. With her, I didn’t think. I just breathed, existed. I looked at her for a long time without needing to explain anything. She knew and sat quietly with my silence.
At the end, when she embraced me, I felt as if I was leaving a part of my soul with her. I didn’t cry much in front of her, but every tear I held inside was for her. She whispered, “Don’t cry.” But her voice trembled, and her eyes were drowning in tears. She wasn’t commanding me, she was pleading. I didn’t respond. I just looked at her, my heart collapsing in silence. It was a farewell neither of us wanted, but within it we lived everything we had never said.
Breaking
Then the final day finally arrived. The house my family has been staying in was full. My uncles, cousins, and neighbours all came from different parts of Deir al-Balah, and even from what remains of Gaza City. Drones hovered in the sky. Bombings could happen at any time. But they risked their lives just to say goodbye.
I tried to capture their faces, the streets I walked through to see them, with my eyes, like a camera, because I wanted to carry them with me in my mind.
The faces were familiar, but the looks had changed. Their eyes were full of quiet sorrow. I had already visited many of them when I knew I was leaving. We had sat and drank tasteless coffee, speaking of small things, while drones buzzed above us like part of the conversation. “No one is saying goodbye,” I’d said. “I’ll be back. We’ll sit in our homes again, once they are rebuilt.”
But the truth ran deeper than my words. I tried to capture their faces, the streets I walked through to see them, with my eyes, like a camera, because I wanted to carry them with me in my mind.
That last night, as everyone gathered, I stepped outside. I couldn’t bear the walls anymore. The sky was full of planes. The sound of explosions never stopped. I stood there alone, under a sky that knew me well, that had borne witness to my entire life. I couldn’t hold myself together anymore. I broke, in silence.
Edited by Eric Reidy.
–––––
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.
