Fleeing Gaza City
September 29, 2025
When, on September 9, Israel ordered the residents of Gaza City to evacuate to the south, I couldn’t believe it. The pain hit like a missile when I read the paper flyers the Israeli military had distributed throughout the city: “To all residents of Gaza, leave now to the south or else you will die. – [Israel Defense Forces] Declaration.”
This was far from the first time Israel had ordered people in Gaza to evacuate, forcibly displacing people throughout the Strip. But this time, something felt different—more ominous. It wasn’t just another warning. It felt like a final sentence, as if Gaza City was next in line to be turned into rubble, the same way Gaza’s southern city of Rafah had been razed to the ground earlier this year.
At first, I refused to leave. I’m from the al-Tuffah neighborhood in northeastern Gaza City. I had already been displaced several times—I knew what displacement meant. It meant losing everything—my identity, my home, my dignity. At the time of Israel’s September evacuation order, I was staying in Sheikh Radwan, a neighborhood in northwestern Gaza City, with my wife, Somai, and our nine-month-old son, Omar, at my wife’s family’s house, itself a temporary refuge.
When the evacuation order came, we stayed in the city, moving farther west to the al-Nasser neighborhood in western Gaza City. The city was still under fire as the Israeli military escalated its bombing campaign, destroying neighborhood after neighborhood, but we kept hoping for a miracle that never came. Eventually, we sought shelter in a partially destroyed house in the city’s southwestern Tal al-Hawa neighborhood with my parents, my younger brother, and his wife. For a week, we endured a hell that I wouldn’t wish on anyone. Bombs fell relentlessly. The house trembled. So did our hope.
One morning, Somai and I were sitting on the doorstep with a cup of tea. I was holding Omar in my arms and, for a moment, life felt almost normal—until we heard screams from a nearby school-turned-shelter.
Panic.
People were rushing out. They told us the school would be flattened within minutes. I raced to warn my family. We moved a short distance away from the house we were staying in to wait it out, praying this was just another false alarm designed to make us panic. But then came the real terror: Israeli forces launched an explosive robot behind us. Shrapnel fell around us. Children screamed. Women wept. My heart broke, and something inside me snapped.
We had no choice. We had to leave Gaza City.
My family left Gaza City with nothing. No suitcase. No map. All I had was my wife, my son in my arms, and the life I once built in the city now crumbling behind me. Ahead of us lay only uncertainty—an unfamiliar road and a borrowed future. I carried the weight of shattered dreams and silent prayers, driven only by the need to survive.
We walked for nearly twelve miles along the coastal road, carrying our child with whatever strength we had left. By nightfall, we reached Az-Zawaida in central Gaza. Exhausted, we asked locals where we could find shelter.
We found someone who offered to help us. He led us to a strip of land where we were introduced to a small, makeshift camp with two tents. By the time we arrived, it was pitch black. The tents belonged to a family, which at the time was a group of ten. The father, a man named Abu Mohammed, welcomed us warmly. One of the tents was for the man and his sons, and the other for the rest of his family, who hadn’t yet arrived. Despite that, he generously offered us the second tent for the night, telling us we could stay there until morning.
There was no water or electricity. Just a mattress and a rusty, broken toilet with no sanitation. But we slept. Somehow, we slept.
Two days later, the rest of the man’s family arrived, and they needed their tent back. We had nowhere to go. Desperate, my wife called her father, who had evacuated from Sheikh Radwan, fleeing to Khan Yunis in the south. She told him the truth: We were homeless. His tent was already full, but he told us we could stay with him until we found a solution.
With the help of a few kind friends, I managed to buy a small tent. It cost me $1,200. But I haven’t yet found a place to set it up. For now, we are still staying in my father-in-law’s crowded tent, waiting for something permanent and safe.
I don’t know what tomorrow brings. I don’t know if my son will remember Gaza City as his home or as a place we fled from. But I do know this: I will keep walking. I will keep hoping. And I will keep telling our story—because silence helps no one.
A New and Harsh Life in the Tent
October 1, 2025
With the first rays of sunlight piercing through the thin fabric of our tent, the heat quickly builds, waking us from a restless sleep and pushing us into another day of survival. Every morning begins the same: A heavy, stifling warmth wraps around us, reminding us of the harsh reality we now call life. We set up our tent in Az-Zawaida in central Gaza.
Somai and I rise early, though sleep never comes easily in this place. Each morning, we shake out our mattresses, which lie on the bare sand and are constantly invaded by dust and insects. Then, Somai turns her attention to Omar. She gently cleans his face, changes his diaper and clothes, and tries to make him look and feel fresh. But within minutes, he’s dirty again: The dust here clings to everything—to our skin, to our clothes, and even to the air we breathe. My wife has to repeat this routine countless times each day. It breaks her. She often voices her worry that Omar might get sick from all the dust. I can see that she’s exhausted, not just physically, but emotionally, too. She’s trying to raise our son with love and dignity in a place that feels to be lacking both.
Our mental health has started to decline. It’s something we rarely talk about, but it shows. We’re both more irritable, especially with Omar. And yet, he’s just a curious baby. He wants to play, to crawl, to explore the world around him. His giggles and cries echo inside the tent, reminding us of the life and joy that still exist, but also of the normalcy that’s been stolen from us. It hurts to see his childhood unfolding in a place so unfit for any child.
At around 8:30 a.m., I step outside of our tent to boil water for Omar. The sun is already blazing. I feel it burn my forehead, sweat pouring down my face and back. I stumble a little as I’m hit with dizziness. Still, I carry on. Water is a treasure here—a rare, precious thing we cannot live without. During our first days in Az-Zawaida, I had no choice but to go from tent to tent, bottle in hand, asking neighbors if they could spare a little of their water. We had no barrels or containers to store it in. Just empty plastic bottles and empty hope.
I asked some local children how they manage to wash their clothes. One of them shrugged and told me, “There’s no water here in Az-Zawaida. We use seawater.” So now, I walk to the sea when we need to wash laundry or clean dishes. Saltwater isn’t ideal, but it’s all we have.
When night falls, the atmosphere shifts again. Despite the day’s heat, the cold wind from the Mediterranean Sea seeps through our thin walls. We do our best to seal the tent and keep Omar warm, shutting every flap and wrapping him in blankets. But the cold still finds its way in. Sometimes, I light a small fire outside the tent to warm our hands, boil tea, or just to feel human for a few minutes.
We are trying. Every day is an act of survival. Every night is filled with uncertainty. We think about home—our real home in Gaza City—and wonder if it’s still there. We haven’t seen it since we fled in September, and have no way of knowing what, if anything, is left of it.
All we want as a family is to return to our home in Gaza City. We don’t even know if it is still standing after the destruction from Israeli bombs, and that uncertainty weighs heavily on our hearts. As a father and a husband, my deepest desire is to provide my wife and son with a life of dignity and safety—something that seems so far away now. They deserve a decent life, a place where Omar can grow without fear or hardship. Until then, we hold on to hope, enduring this harsh new existence in the tent.
They Call It a Ceasefire
October 28, 2025
On October 8, Israel and Hamas agreed to the first phase of a ceasefire agreement in Gaza. In the aftermath of the announcement, thousands of weary Gazans left their makeshift shelters in the south, making their way back north to Gaza City. Many of us were clinging on to hope. I couldn’t believe it when I heard about the ceasefire. I was excited to get back home, to see my city again. I had thought I would never return.
But the scenes in the city that we returned to were heartbreaking. We arrived back in Gaza City by truck a couple of days after the ceasefire was announced, at the al-Saraya junction. I held Omar while my wife carried our few belongings. We were pale with hunger and thirst. I was shocked by the scale of the mass destruction. My city was lifeless: It had no buildings, no proper streets, no water, no sewage system. Only devastation.
The first thing I did was try to find food—something small, just enough to help us reach what used to be our home in al-Tuffah in northeastern Gaza City. But as we turned onto our old street, I froze. The destruction was overwhelming. Israeli bombs had flattened entire buildings, and the streets were unrecognizable. It felt like we had stepped into a ghost city. Each step we took over the rubble crushed another piece of hope.
When we finally reached our house, it was gone. The ceiling had collapsed, and the floor was covered in broken concrete and glass. Still, we stayed that night, trying to believe we could hold on. But by morning, we were desperate for water. I waited for hours, but no trucks came. A neighbor gave us a single barrel—enough to last us two days, at most.
That was when we realized we wouldn’t be able to live there. Not even in the silence of a ceasefire. Now we’re staying in an abandoned house in western Gaza. It belongs to a relative who’s returning soon with his family. After that, we have nowhere to go. We will be homeless.
Every day, I see my people walk the streets like ghosts—numb, feverish, dazed. Many are sick with the flu. You can hear it everywhere: the sound of sneezing, coughing, and bodies collapsing onto the pavement.
There isn’t a single box of Panadol left in the pharmacies. Can you imagine? Infection is spreading like wildfire, and there’s no way to stop it.
Someone I know told me that his two-year-old daughter had fallen ill. He searched every pharmacy in the city for medication, but there were no antibiotics left anywhere. In desperation, he crushed an adult antibiotic tablet, dissolved it in water, and gave it to her—because that was all he could do. Our hospitals lie in ruins. Israel continues to block medicine and basic medical supplies from entering.
For now, the roar of the bombardment has fallen silent, and the clouds of airstrikes have faded away, but the catastrophe has not ended. The scars of two years of oppression constantly burn upon the foreheads of hundreds of thousands.
They call this a ceasefire, but for us, it’s just a pause in the bombing. The war continues—through our destroyed homes, a collapsed health system, and a life that’s no longer livable.
They celebrate the “end” of the war, blind to the fact that a thousand new wars began the moment the ceasefire was declared. The most brutal of them may be the silent war: the war on medicine, the war on the shattered health care system, the war on survival.