WE had no home to return to. And the Gaza City we knew was no more. But we returned.

Why? Maybe it was nostalgia for our former lives – before October 2023. Maybe the emotions we had left behind before our displacement to the south had remained, waiting to welcome us back.

Either way, the reality that greeted us was harsh and unfamiliar. I realised how much of a stranger I had become in my own city, where I had spent nearly 30 years of my life.

I wandered through streets I could no longer recognise, lost amid the overwhelming destruction. I struggled to find my way from my family’s ruined home to my in-laws’ house, which, though still standing, bore the deep scars of war. I walked down one street, into another – with no familiar landmarks to guide me.

No communication networks, no internet, no electricity, no transportation – not even water. My excitement for returning had turned into a nightmare – ruin and devastation was wherever I turned.

Numb, I roamed through the shattered remnants of family homes. My goal was to reach the place where my home once stood. I already knew that it was no more – I had seen pictures.

But standing there, in front of the rubble of the seven-storey building where I had made so many memories with my family, I was silent.

Homes can be rebuilt

One of my neighbours, also returning from displacement in the south, arrived. We exchanged broken smiles as we gazed at the wreckage of our life’s labour. She was luckier than me – she managed to salvage a few belongings, some old clothes.

But I found nothing. My apartment had been on the first floor, buried beneath layers upon layers of debris.

My colleague, the photographer Abdelhakim Abu Riash, arrived. I told him that I felt no shock, not even any emotion. It wasn’t that I wasn’t grieving, but rather that I had entered a state of emotional numbness – a self-imposed anaesthesia, perhaps a survival mechanism my mind had adopted to shield me from madness.

My husband, on the other hand, was visibly enraged, though silent.

We decided to leave and, as I turned my back on my destroyed home, a deep pain gripped my heart. There is no shelter now, no place to call our own.

But what kept us from breaking down was knowing we were not alone – an entire city stood in ruins.

“At least we survived, and we’re all safe,” I told my husband, trying to comfort him. And then, horrific memories of the past 15 months – spent wandering through hospitals and refugee camps – rushed back. I reminded him: “We’re better off than those who lost their entire families, better off than the little girls who lost their limbs. Our children are safe, we are safe. Homes can be rebuilt.”

We say this often in Gaza, and it is true. But it does not erase the weight of losing one’s home.

‘Be careful with the water’

Unable to walk any further, we made our way to my in-laws’ house. We had been told it was still standing but as we approached through scenes of devastation, we couldn’t recognise the building.

This was where we would now live, in what remained: two rooms, a bathroom and a kitchen.

But once again, there was no space for shock here. Survival demanded adaptation, no matter how little we had. That was the rule of war.

Inside, we found a semblance of relief. My husband’s brother had arrived ahead of us, cleaned a little and secured some water. His only warning: “Be careful with the water. There’s none left in the entire area.”

That single sentence was enough to drain the last ounce of hope from me. I felt a crushing mix of despair, nausea and exhaustion. I could think of nothing but water – just water.

The house’s sewage system was destroyed. Walls were torn open by shelling. The ground and first floors were completely flattened. Life here is barren and utterly bleak.

And what made it worse was the renewed shock of looking out the balcony at devastation as far as the eye could see – too vast, too overwhelming to allow escape from the trauma.

My friend who had stayed in the north had told me often: “The north is completely destroyed. It’s unliveable.” Now I believed her.

My mother’s dresses

The next morning, I went to my parent’s home in Sheikh Radwan, braced for what I would find because I knew, our neighbours had already sent us photos – the house was still there, but gutted by fire.

The Israeli army had stayed in it for some time before setting it on fire as they withdrew, we were told.

We even found a video on TikTok, a soldier who had filmed himself eating a McDonald’s sandwich in my newlywed brother’s living room while watching the neighbouring houses burn.

I wandered through the house, overwhelmed by a flood of memories that had been reduced to ash and rubble. Only one room had survived the fire: my parents’ bedroom. The fire hadn’t touched it.

I stepped into my mother’s room. I lost my mum on May 7, during the war.

Her clothes still hung in the closet, embroidered dresses untouched by flames. Her belongings, her Quran, her prayer chair – everything remained, only coated in heavy dust and shattered glass.

Everything paled in comparison to the moment I stood before my late mother’s wardrobe, tears welling as I gently retrieved her dresses, brushing off the dust.

“This is the dress she wore for my brother Mohammed’s wedding,” I whispered to myself. “And this one… for Moataz’s wedding.”

I grabbed my phone and called my sister, still in the south, my voice trembling between sobs and joy: “I found Mama’s embroidered dresses. I found her clothes! They didn’t burn!”

She gasped with happiness, immediately announcing that she would run to the north the next morning to see our mother’s belongings.

This is what life has become here – rubble everywhere, and yet we rejoice over any fragment, any thread that connects us to the past.

Imagine, then, what it means to find the only tangible traces of our most precious loss – my beloved mother.

Not the Gaza I knew

Two days later, after sifting through wreckage and memories, I forced myself to step outside of my grief.

I decided to visit the Baptist Hospital in the morning, hoping to meet fellow journalists, regain some sense of self and attempt to work on new stories.

I walked for a long time, unable to find transportation. My clothes were soon covered in dust – all that remained after buildings had been pulverised by Israel’s bombs.

Every passer-by was the same, coated in layers of grey from head to toe, eyelashes weighed down by debris.

Around me, people were clearing the wreckage of their homes. Stones rained down from collapsed upper floors as men and women shovelled rubble, dust billowing through the air, swallowing entire streets.

A woman stopped me and asked where she could recharge her phone credit. I hesitated, then blurted out: “I’m sorry, Auntie, I’m new here… I don’t know.”

I walked away, shocked at my response. My subconscious had accepted it – this was no longer the Gaza I knew.

I used to know Gaza by heart. Every street – al-Jalaa, Shati Camp, Sheikh Radwan, Remal, al-Jundi. I knew all the back roads, every market, every famous bakery, every restaurant, every café. I knew exactly where to find the best cakes, the most elegant clothes, the branches of telecom companies, the internet service providers.

Now, there were no landmarks left. No street signs. No points of reference. Does this matter anymore?

I continued walking down al-Jalaa Street, struggling to place the past upon the ruins. Sometimes I succeeded, sometimes I took a picture to study later, to compare it with what once was.

North and south

Finally, I found a car heading my way. The driver gestured for me to sit beside a woman in the front seat. In the back, five other women and a child were squeezed together.

Along the way, the driver picked up yet another passenger, cramming him into the last available space.

Every moment felt like an error – a system overload in my mind.

At the hospital, my memories jolted back to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir el-Balah where hospitals became journalists’ only refuge – the only places with electricity and internet since the war began.

This time, the faces were different, and it was apparent that the journalists from the north had experienced this war very differently from how we had in the south.

I moved hesitantly through the corridors, whenever we encountered a journalist, I whispered to Abdelhakim: “Is this person from the north? Or were they with us in the south?”

It was a genuine question. Conversations, familiarity, the weight of words – they all felt different, depending on where we had endured the war.

Yes, there was death and destruction in the south, Israel had not spared Rafah, Deir el-Balah or Khan Younis. But it was different in Gaza City and northern Gaza – people here had endured pain to a degree that we simply had not.

Whenever I recognised a colleague from the south, my face lit up and I stopped, eager to talk, sharing stories of the impossible journey along al-Rashid Road, asking about their first glimpse of the city, about the moment they saw their family homes.

That was when I truly understood: We felt like strangers in our own city.

The struggle to belong again

Israel’s war had not only reshaped Gaza’s landscape but also the people within it. It had formed new identities under fire, dividing us in ways we never imagined

A bitter, aching truth – we lost Gaza, over and over again, its people, its spirit, ourselves.

For 15 months, we thought the greatest nightmare was displacement – that exile was the cruellest fate. People wept for home, dreaming only of return.

But now, return seems far more merciless. In the south, we were called “displaced”. In the north, we are now “returnees”, the people who stayed blaming us for leaving when the evacuation orders came.

Sometimes, we blame ourselves too. But what choice did we have?

And now, we carry a quiet shame – a small, unspoken mark that has lived in our hearts since the day we left, and that we see reflected in the eyes of those who remained.

I had imagined the day we returned north would mark the end of the war but, wandering the devastated streets, I realised: I’m still waiting for that end, the moment when we can say: “This chapter of bloodshed is over.”

I long to put the final period, so we might begin again – even if the beginning is painful.  But there is no period. No closure. No end.

I drag myself forward, dust clinging to my clothes that I don’t bother to shake off. Tears mix with the rubble, and I do not wipe them away

The reality is that we’ve been abandoned to an open-ended fate, a road with no direction: We are lost.  We have no strength left to rebuild. No energy to start again.