Nasser Rabah —

Translated by Wiam El-Tamami

In this very moment, as I write this, I can hear disturbing noises: tanks moving nearby, heavy gunfire. My wife continues to make dinner. Our home is 200 meters away from the so-called yellow line: the line that divides the territory occupied by the Israeli army from what remains of the Gaza Strip. We hear these frightening sounds almost every day.

A few days ago, a bullet broke through our bedroom window, piercing the glass and the curtain and sailing all the way across the room before settling in the closet. Half an hour later, we went back to sleep.

This is how the days go now, here in Gaza.



In 2015, the Palestinian writer Atef Abu Saif published a novel titled A Life in Limbo, which describes the lives of Gaza’s inhabitants as periods of brief respite between recurring wars. From 2005 to 2025, Gaza had to endure five wars—in 2008, 2012, 2014, 2021, and 2023—each lasting between one week and two years, in addition to six incursions and various assassinations. The area, which spans a mere 365 square kilometers and is home to approximately 2.3 million people, has also been subjected to a complete blockade that has impacted all areas of life. Since then, life in Gaza has ground to a halt. It has been deemed the largest open-air prison in the world. Freedom of movement has been severely limited; fishing, agriculture, electricity, water, fuel, and many other goods have been heavily restricted; and political representation has been all but abolished as Israel refused to recognize the democratically elected government represented by Hamas.

In 2012, the United Nations questioned whether Gaza would be livable by 2020. By 2022, unemployment rates had soared to almost 45 percent. Poverty spread, divorce and school dropout rates skyrocketed, drug use became widespread, and Gaza witnessed many cases of suicide. A general feeling of despair and apathy had prevailed among young people.

This was all before the latest genocidal war: an unprecedented catastrophe whose horrific consequences include the murder of 70,000–100,000 people, the displacement of hundreds of thousands more, and the obliteration of entire cities and villages. Since the fall of 2023, 81 percent of the buildings in Gaza have been damaged or reduced to rubble, and 1.7 million people are now living in tents. Schools and universities have been destroyed. Hospitals have been decimated. According to the International Labor Organization, unemployment rates have now reached 79 percent. We find ourselves, after the “ceasefire,” in a state of suspended existence—neither truly living nor truly dead. And yet people have had to adapt to these appalling circumstances; we continue to live our lives, because there is no alternative.

Fear and distress have completely pervaded our everyday existence. Twice over the past month I was heading home in a passenger van when the car next to ours was bombed less than half a minute after we had passed it. The first time, I heard the explosion as if it were in my own chest, and I saw the billowing smoke. The second time, I saw the remains of bodies; I saw one person drowning in his own blood. Both times, our vehicle drove on, the other passengers commenting on what had happened as if we’d seen it on television.

I don’t leave my house unless it’s absolutely necessary, usually to meet the group of biology students I tutor. Most schools in Gaza have been destroyed, and those that remain have been turned into shelters to house the displaced. Two months ago, I announced that I would be offering free biology lessons to displaced girls. I prepared a corridor between two buildings next to my house. I covered it with a tarp and made benches out of scrap wood that had been discarded from trucks after the goods were unloaded. I bought a whiteboard and pens. I welcomed more than thirty students who completed twelfth-grade biology with me.

I could answer many of my students’ questions, except one: “Sir, will we be able to do our exams?” In the schools-turned-shelters, there are no suitable halls that can hold the final secondary school exams, and it’s unlikely that even the minimum requirements for safe and transparent examinations will be met. Sitting for exams is vital: It is the only way for young people to progress, to fulfill requirements for further education, to be able to apply for universities and possibly have a chance to leave Gaza. No matter how hard they study, if there is no way to sit for examinations, they are barred from the global educational system. The question about examinations is therefore a question about their future—about the possibility of a future.

And yet, students continue to study independently, without schools or teachers. Some have self-organized, creating educational WhatsApp groups to communicate, have discussions, and exchange information and learning materials. Sometimes they use online programs or receive the support of volunteer tutors. They continue to do the work, without any assurance that their work will be evaluated and rewarded anytime soon.

Tutoring my biology group, I feel like a soldier in a battle for education and awareness. The joy and gratitude I have received from students is greater than any material reward; there is a feeling of pride and triumph that I’m sure I will continue to talk about for a long time. I have received many messages of thanks from them on my phone, and shared them with my wife and children. I have tried to contribute in the one way I could just so I could sleep at night, and in order not to succumb to the state of apathy, of nothingness, that has gripped most of the people of Gaza.

Many others are also battling against this apathy and trying to make their contribution. I am also involved in a small educational space created by Basel Abed and Khaled Najjar, two teachers from Maghazi Camp who were teaching intermittently in schools around Gaza before the genocide. Even back then, their income was not enough to support their families, and during the genocide they lost their homes, and are currently living in tents. They found a large abandoned house, partially destroyed, and contacted its owner with the idea of creating an educational space for young children. She agreed and allowed them to use the space for free. They made tremendous efforts to repair the place, provide tables and chairs, and convince other colleagues to work with them. They now have 300 children in elementary and middle school, studying in a semiformal setting. They don’t charge the students any fees, relying instead on donations from some funders to cover the basic wage of their staff. I teach there twice a week, for free. This is just one example of the many ways the people of Gaza continue to fight and persevere, facing the current crisis with incredible positivity and determination, even defiance—but it is also an enormous burden that cannot be sustained in the long run.

During the war, I was in contact with publishing houses in the United States and Spain. I managed to have several translations of my books published, as well as poems in prestigious literary magazines.¹ I wrote those poems during the genocide, amid explosions and terror and the constant noise of falling bombs, without electricity, in a house badly damaged by the bombing. Despite these extremely harsh circumstances, I wrote in order to convey the voice and experiences of the people in Gaza, in order to do something, in order not to succumb to despair. I, at least, still had a house that was habitable—a luxury that the hundreds of thousands of people now living in tents in Gaza don’t have.

A week ago, I had some free time before going to meet my students, so I passed by a friend of mine who has a shop selling agricultural pesticides. In the ten minutes I spent sitting with him in his shop, no fewer than four customers walked in with the same request: rodent poison.

Eighty percent of Gaza’s buildings have been decimated. The rubble and destroyed houses are an ideal breeding ground for rats and weasels. The situation has become so extreme that there have been various cases of children being admitted to hospital after having been bitten by rodents inside the tents.

Everything that enters or is forbidden from entering Gaza is subject to the approval of the Israeli occupation forces; everything is bound up with political decisions in Israel. To this day, water, cooking gas, and fuel are either banned or severely restricted. While some foodstuffs, medicines, and clothing are allowed to enter, electricity, construction materials, and car parts are outright banned. Travel is restricted to a limited number of cases, all involving medical emergencies. There is no widespread electricity, but some private companies provide poor-quality power for a few hours a day at exorbitant prices. There is no potable water, but a few charity organizations desalinate and sell it. There is no cooking gas, but sometimes we are able to find a small quantity every two or three months. We have to rely on firewood or charcoal, but even these are sold at unbelievable prices. There is no gasoline or diesel for cars, so people have had to resort to animal-drawn carts. The few cars that remain run on cooking oil, with wooden trailers attached to them to transport more passengers. They are a significant part of the daily catastrophe, as they contribute to the soaring price of oil. But the drivers have no other choice, as Israel always ensures there are insufficient supplies. A few foreign humanitarian aid organizations distribute meals at points throughout Gaza. Every day, you can see children, the elderly, and disabled people queuing up with empty containers, waiting for the distribution truck to arrive so they can receive their one meal a day, usually rice and cooked vegetables. This humiliation is endured by the people of Gaza because, for many, given the exorbitant prices, the alternative is starvation. In these ways and many more, people have been trying to find temporary solutions for life to go on—a life that is becoming more difficult as one feels that the situation is no longer temporary, that there is no end in sight.

The pavements are crowded with young people selling simple wares. Many of them had professions that were completely obliterated by the war. They were builders, carpenters, plumbers, factory workers, electricians, students, shop owners and employees. They have all become unemployed or have turned to selling biscuits on the pavements of Gaza—selling their days and futures just to make enough to survive.

M.R. is a twenty-five-year-old university graduate who studied accounting. Before the war, he had applied for a position as an accountant at a food-processing factory. After a series of interviews and evaluations, he was chosen out of over 200 applicants for the job. He began saving up money to build and prepare a home where he could get married—an essential precondition for marriage in Gaza. He considered this job the opportunity of a lifetime, a gift from the heavens. During the war, the factory was completely destroyed, and there is no hope that it will ever be rebuilt.

M.R. now stands on the pavement, buying and selling canned goods for over twelve hours a day just so he can cover his daily expenses. There is no longer any thought of marriage or preparing for a future. He says that Gaza going back to the awful situation it was in before the war is now almost a dream—and the current situation feels like a kind of death.

These circumstances were only supposed to last for a few weeks after the ceasefire, but now there is no indication that this will ever end. There is no news of specific dates or plans to change things for the better. Just one wretched day that has been repeating itself over and over again for six months, and might continue for years. Like a film in which someone dies at midnight every day and wakes up at 6:00 am to go through the same cycle of suffering all over again.

Days, months, years are passing by without any real change, any real value. No improvement in work possibilities or living conditions, and no end in sight for this ongoing catastrophe. It’s a state of neither war nor peace, neither death nor life.

Time here means nothing. Nobody cares if it’s Sunday or Monday, if it’s March or October. All the days have run into one another, like clouds rolling across the sky while people stand by and watch.

I wrote the first draft of this piece during Ramadan, a time meant for spiritual devotion, for prayer, for drawing close to God. The social rituals are also important: traditionally, families gather at one another’s houses to share meals. Of course, this has now become almost impossible because of the mass displacement. It’s difficult to invite family members over for a meal in a tent, compounded by the difficulty and high cost of transportation, not to mention the lack of sufficient food. Now that the majority of mosques have been destroyed, prayers are often held in tents or between clusters of tents. The atmosphere of serenity and quiet contemplation has been destroyed. I especially miss Ramadan and everything associated with it. I feel such sorrow, such bitterness, at everything that has been lost. I try to pretend to myself that it’s just a phase, that it will pass. But Gaza is experiencing an ongoing state of temporary fixes for emergency conditions—relief, not development. As time goes on, this situation is becoming permanent, forcing people to live with impossible conditions.

The only way out of Gaza, through the Rafah crossing, is closed. It is opened only on very rare occasions, to allow twenty or thirty people with severe illnesses that cannot be treated in Gaza to pass through. Each patient is allowed up to two travel companions. You can imagine the number of bribes paid and strings pulled for people to have a chance to leave Gaza as someone’s companion.

S.D. is thirty years old. She’s engaged to someone who had left for the Gulf just two months before the genocide began to find work and a home for them before she joined him. S.D. has now been waiting for almost three years for the crossing to be opened so she can travel to him. She says her life has been at a standstill since the day she got engaged; she’s getting older and life is passing her by without any hope that things will change soon. “Nothing in my life indicates that the war has ended, she says. I’m still waiting—with hope, without hope—for this war that has eaten up three years of my life to end.”

S.D. is looking for an opportunity to travel as someone’s companion, just like hundreds of thousands of other young people who are waiting to leave Gaza so they can continue their education, find work, get married, or immigrate.

Basma Marshoud is fifty years old. She was displaced from Jabaliya and lost most of her family during the genocide. Their homes and businesses were destroyed, and everything she and her husband had saved up throughout their life together was buried under rubble. She currently lives in a tent close to Saladin Street with her daughter and her husband, who is battling cancer. She is constantly thinking about her destroyed home, dreaming that it will one day be rebuilt, just so she can have some walls to support her. She dreams of being able to leave Gaza so her husband will have access to a proper bathroom and a hot shower even once before he dies. She says she has no money to pay someone to expedite the process, and there is little hope of anyone helping her without money.

The stories of suffering are endless. Every day, I turn to my mobile phone and try to write something, but I find myself unable to. There’s no point in planting wheat in a place thick with weeds.

Ultimately, we are waiting for the establishment of a political entity that will govern the area, a government that represents the Palestinian people and that will work on bringing life back to Gaza. We are hoping for a government that will immediately begin to alleviate these difficult circumstances by rebuilding homes, schools, and hospitals, and restoring electricity, water, and sanitation networks. We hope that Gaza will become a place where travel is not restricted and people are guaranteed freedom of movement. For now, and for the foreseeable future, this hope remains vague and the wait is unbearable. It feels that the air we breathe here in Gaza is filled with despair.

A few days ago, I was walking past a small coffee shop in Maghazi Camp. I heard a lot of noise, screaming and yelling of a different kind. They were shouts of joy, of celebration. When I went in to look, I found that it was a football match in the Champions League—I think Real Madrid was playing. All the spectators were under thirty. Almost fifty people were crammed into that 4-by-5-meter room, all watching a match on a single 40-inch screen. The only source of entertainment here in Gaza is a football match. The spectators were yelling as though they were in the stadium, trying to forget about the suffering of a long day that repeats itself over and over again—and the fact that at any moment a bomb could drop from the sky, like a final whistle, signaling the end of their lives.