Fear is not a word that can describe what we feel in Gaza

Al Jazeera

08-04-2025

Last week, during another violent night, my almost four-year-old niece asked me a question I'll never forget.
'If we die while sleeping… will it still hurt?'
I didn't know what to say.
How do you tell a child — who has seen more death than daylight — that dying in your sleep is a mercy?
So I told her: 'No. I don't think so. That's why we should fall asleep now.'
She nodded quietly, and turned her face to the wall.
She believed me. She closed her eyes.
I sat in the dark, listening to the bombs, wondering how many children were being buried alive just down the street.
I have 12 nieces and nephews. All are under the age of nine. They have been my solace and joy in these dark times.
But I, like their parents, struggle to help them make sense of what is going on around us. We have had to lie to them so many times. They would often believe us, but sometimes they would feel in our voices or our stares that something terrifying was happening. They would feel the horror in the air.
No child should ever have to endure such brutality. No parent should have to cower in despair, knowing they cannot protect their children.
Last month, the ceasefire ended, and with it, the illusion of a pause.
What followed wasn't just a resumption of war — it was a shift to something more brutal and relentless.
In the span of three weeks, Gaza has become a field of fire, where no one is safe. More than 1,400 men, women and children have been slaughtered.
Daily massacres have shattered what remained of our ability to hope.
Some of them have hit home.
Not just emotionally. Physically. Just yesterday, the air was filled with dust and the smell of blood from just a few streets away. The Israeli army targeted al-Nakheel Street in Gaza City, killing 11 people, including five children.
A few days earlier, at Dar al-Arqam School, a place that had sheltered displaced families, an Israeli air strike turned classrooms into ash. At least 30 people were killed in seconds—mostly women and children. They had come there seeking safety, believing the blue United Nations flag would protect them. It didn't. The school is less than 10 minutes away from my home.
The same day, the nearby Fahd School was also bombarded; three people were killed.
A day earlier, there was news of a horror scene in Jabalia.
An Israeli strike targeted a clinic run by the UNRWA, where civilians were sheltering.
Eyewitnesses described body parts strewn across the clinic. Children burned alive. An infant decapitated. The smell of burning flesh suffocating the survivors. It was a massacre in a place meant for healing.
Amid all this, parts of Gaza City received evacuation orders.
Evacuate. Now. But to where? Gaza has no safe zones. The north is levelled. The south is bombed.
The sea is a prison. The roads are death traps.
We stayed.
It is not because we are brave. It is because we have nowhere else to go.
Fear is not the right word to describe what we feel in Gaza. Fear is manageable. Fear can be named.
What we feel is a choking, silent terror that sits inside your chest and never leaves.
It is the moment between a missile's whistle and the impact, when you wonder if your heart has stopped.
It is the sound of children crying from under the rubble. The smell of blood spreading with the wind.
It is the question my niece asked.
Foreign governments and politicians call it a 'conflict'. A 'complex situation'. A 'tragedy'. But what we are living through is not complex.
It is a plain massacre. What we are living through is not a tragedy. It is a war crime.
I am a writer. A journalist. I've spent months writing, documenting, calling out to the world through my words. I have sent dispatches. I have told stories no one else could. And yet — so often — I feel like I am screaming into a void.
Still, I keep writing. Because even if the world looks away, I will not let our truth remain unspoken. Because I believe someone is listening. Somewhere. I write because I believe in humanity, even when governments have turned their backs on it. I write so that when history is written, no one can say they didn't know.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial stance.