I’ve Endured Two Years of Genocide. But I’m Still Here.

For two years, Gaza has experienced a relentless genocide. Life has been reduced to an endless cycle of loss and suffering in a system that spares nothing – neither human, nor stone, nor tree. Death is a constant presence. Day after day we suffer from siege, hunger, bombardment and destruction; displacement and disorientation; houses collapsing into rubble atop the bodies and dreams of those who once lived inside. Loved ones disappear, leaving only photographs in place of their faces. The city itself pulses with chaos, beating as wild as my own heart.

The world of two years ago is a distant memory. Before October 7, and despite 18 years of blockade imposed by the Israeli occupation, life still felt almost luxurious for us – ordinary, simple and threaded with a sense of security and freedom that survived in our hearts. The siege narrowed our horizons, but it never robbed us of the feeling of being alive. That didn’t stop us from imagining a future we could build with our own hands.

On July 20, 2023, I graduated from high school. Those days were full of joy – celebrations with my friends, ceremonies that seemed endless. Soon after, I enrolled at the Islamic University of Gaza, where my father is a professor and where he had taken me countless times as a child. The memories of walking beside him through those halls remain vivid. I chose to major in English literature, a subject I have always loved. The world of books and new languages ​​fascinated me, and I couldn’t wait to begin the university life I had imagined for years.

For a month, my father drove me to college every morning and we returned together in the afternoon. I met my friends at conferences or just afterwards. Then the genocide came and everything I had built collapsed. Classes stopped for nine months. On June 28, 2024, the university announced that classes were resuming, but only online.

I continued with determination. Only 42 credit hours now separate me from graduation. I would tell myself over and over: This is not the university life I imagined. But I persevered, because education is a form of resistance to the occupation.

I constructed an inner world in my studies to escape the one outside. In my introductory literature class, we were asked to listen to lectures by Dr. Refaat Alareer, the writer and poet murdered by the Israeli army. I was never his student in a classroom, but I watched all his lectures and read everything he wrote, everything he inspired his students to write. In one video, he talked about the importance of telling stories, citing two passages that stuck with me.

The first involved a First Nations Canadian who approached colonizers dividing the land. When they told him, “We own this land; we divide it between us,” he replied, “If this is your land, tell me your stories. If this is truly your land, tell me your stories.” There was only silence in response, for they had no stories on this earth – they did not truly belong.

The second was from Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe: “If the Lions do not have their own historians, the history of hunting will always glorify the hunters.” So if we don’t write our histories, as Dr. Alareer says, “history will always glorify the occupier and the colonizer, rather than the colonized, the oppressed, the indigenous, the rightful people of the earth.” »

These words inspired me to take my own step into writing. Eight months ago, I started publishing because I felt it was my duty to tell the stories of my people. Reading and writing have been my talents since childhood, but in the ongoing Israeli genocide, they have become both my therapy and my weapon.

Over the past eight months, I have written about the daily experience of this genocide and those I lost. The occupation not only killed our dreams; It killed my loved ones one by one. Each name marks a void that cannot be filled, each memory lives in my texts and my heart: my dearest friends Shimaa Saidam (19), Raghad al-Naami (19), Lina al-Hour (19), Mayar Jouda (18), Asmaa Jouda (21), with my family members: my aunt Asmaa, my wife and her children Huthaifa (13) and Hala (8). When I look at their photos, I don’t see simple images – I see faces full of affection, warmth and life.