Stranded in Egypt, haunted by Gaza: Will I ever get to go home again?

By Mariam Al Khateeb

My nights are restless. I haven't slept a full night's sleep in a year. Before it was the sound of bombs dropping and the screams that followed that would keep me awake. Now it's the memory of those nights that stops me from closing my eyes in my small room in Kafr el-Sheikh, 130 km north of Cairo in Egypt.

I've been here for seven months. I wasn't meant to be here for so long.

I was one of the "lucky ones" who managed to cross the Rafah border before Israel sealed it in May, imprisoning Palestinains, including my parents, in a death camp.

Most mornings when I get up, it takes me a moment to realise where I am. When I realise I'm not in the warmth of my bed in Nuseirat camp in Gaza, a dull pain hits the back of my throat and moves down to the pit of my stomach. It's the pain I've come to know as missing my family. I feel empty.

Gaza is dying

When I meet others from Gaza displaced here (around 100,000 of us have fled to Egypt since the start of the war), we gather to remember our home, and always our desire to return.

But after a year of war, I'm losing hope. Gaza is dying.

Even if my family finds a way to evacuate and join me in Egypt, what then? We've lost everything. I think about my parents. They spent their lives trying to build a home, provide an education for me and my siblings despite living under occupation - and now they have nothing and will have to start from point zero.

How do we start again? We're carrying a pain called Gaza, a pain called genocide.

I keep thinking our lives ended last September. That was the last time we took photographs, enjoyed meals and the company of friends.

October 7 changed everything.

Bombing never stopped

It was a Saturday morning. There was an event at my university that I was looking forward to going to with my friends.

I woke up in my home in Nuseirat to the sound of bombing, but this isn't unusual in Gaza. We're always under attack from Israel, but the world didn’t seem to care about us until last year.

I thought the raid may last a few hours, at best a few days.

But instead they intensified, and the sound of bombs were followed by the painful sound of screams as families shrieked at losing loved ones.

After two days of this, we were told to evacuate, that our neighbourhood would be bombed.

We left for just a few days, first to the local UNRWA school, and then to my uncle's house a few streets away before returning to our house on October 12. There was destruction, but our place still stood.

But then days later, evacuation orders from Israel came for all of northern Gaza. They were coming to destroy our homes.

When we left, no one imagined we would be displaced for a year.

Tawala, it's the Arabic for for 'it's too long', that's what everyone is saying. The bombings continue, people die every day. Everything has stopped functioning.

Many young people who used to walk to school each morning now form queues to collect daily food, water, and humanitarian assistance for their families. The tables of homes in Gaza once spread with Palestinian dishes served with a smile, have become empty. Cosy homes, always welcoming, are now cold tents that struggle against the weather to protect those seeking shelter inside.

Some 1.9 million people are currently displaced in Gaza, many of whom have already been forced to move multiple times over the past year.

There is no English equivalent to the Arabic word ma'jaat. The dictionary says "starvation," but it's more than that. No one can imagine the meaning of starvation in 2024, and no one can imagine that children will die of hunger and that people will be killed searching for food.

Leaving Gaza On March 6, my aunty phoned me in the morning. She said my name had been called at the border. I was on the list. I was allowed to cross into Egypt to continue my dentistry studies.

I was the only member of my family who would be going, my younger brother and two sisters stayed. It was important to my parents that I continue my studies, so that I can work towards a future.

But as I crossed that border, I realised I had left my soul behind. I'm now facing the world alone.

I feel overwhelmed that I left Gaza alone. I was escaping a dangerous situation in my country, but I don't live better here. Yes, I escaped danger, but I don't have a family here and I don't feel safe. Sometimes I walk in the streets, and I start to feel dizzy, so I call my family and tell them that I think I'm going crazy.

My birthday was bittersweet. It was in June I turned 20, three months after I’d left Gaza. Before the war, my mother would bake me a cake, there’d be decorations in the house, and gifts on the table. This year, it was the calls from all my surviving family members that lit my day. Despite their hardship, they still found a way to celebrate me. I missed them more.

I miss my life there, my university. The streets of the city weren't the best, but it was Gaza. I don't know what they do back home or if they have food on the table or if they are even alive.

I can smell death from here. I wonder if it's the smell of burned bodies floating through the air, able to cross borders without the right paperwork, or whether it's phantosmia - the hallucination of remembered smells.

But at other times, I get wafts of Gaza - the unique smell of people mixed with the smell of the sea.

Then there's the smell of food and spices, the smells of the old city of Gaza come back to me. It is a smell that you can never get rid of. In my mind, I walk through the alleys of the city while inhaling the smell of the cuisine that it is famous for, tasting the food from Souq al Zawiya Street, which is crowded with people on occasions like Ramadan, holidays and times when people are preparing for university and buying clothes, it is the place where you can find anything.

It's these memories that keep me going, but after a year of war, I fear we may lose Palestine completely. It's not just me, it's the fear that's coming to many Palestinian minds.

War is spreading The war is now spreading, it's in the occupied West Bank and Lebanon too. This is what scares us.

With the passage of time, Palestinians' dreams changed from returning to the homes left during the Nakba [catastrophe] to returning to the lost homes in Gaza. The dream of returning even there is now beginning to fade.

For the ones still there, I hear "we prefer to die under Gaza's dust, than to go out and live in any other country." That steadfastness is their strength.

Meanwhile I live a life of contradictions, which feels like a heavy burden. At university I interact with those around me, putting a smile on my face, as if everything is OK. But with every breath, all I think about is Gaza - my entire family is there.

The author, Mariam Al Khateeb is a former medical student in Gaza. She is a member of We Are Not Numbers, a project to help young adults in Gaza share their narratives with the Western world and bust stereotypes about Palestinians.

Disclaimer: The views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect the opinions, viewpoints and editorial policies of TRT Afrika.

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