Palestinians return home in Gaza, but without their loved ones

Gaza City, Palestine – Aya Hassouna is thin with a pale face. Her eyes are red, and her voice is full of sadness.

She had a husband, Abdullah, and two children, four-year-old Hamza, and two-year-old Raghad. But as she returned with hundreds of thousands of other Palestinians to northern Gaza after months of displacement in the south of the enclave, she was travelling alone.

Abdullah, Hamza and Raghad were killed in an Israeli attack on August 9, as they prepared for a day trip to the beach, an attempt to escape the daily horrors of the war.

Aya described a strong explosion, smoke, and then her children lying dead on the ground with blood pouring from their heads.

Abdullah, who had earlier gone to buy ingredients for a cake and some snacks for the beach, was dead too.

“Since that time, I have been trying to be strong. I am trying to endure the separation,” Aya said. “But everything around me reminds me of them.”

Her journey back home to Gaza City’s as-Saftawi neighbourhood last week, as part of the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, had many of those painful reminders. Abdullah had been desperate to go back home. He’d already set aside the clothes he would wear for the journey. She took her husband’s outfit with her on her long walk north, as well as those of her children. And she walked, alone.

“Sadness was eating away at my heart,” Aya said. “Sometimes I cried. I looked at the families walking together, a mother, a father and their children. As for me, I was alone without any of them.”

Aya arrived at her family’s home and reunited with her mother, but she is not sure how long the journey took. Her mind was preoccupied with the heartache of the losses that still haunt her.