A lot of noise – missiles and explosions, the sound of drones, shouting and wailing, screams of “martyr, martyr”. The breaking of glass, slamming doors, collapsing buildings, fires blazing, thunder, lightning, wind, gasps of death, darkness, and ashes. All of them are still in my head.
I left Gaza almost a year ago, but these images and sounds are still haunting me. I left everything behind – my home, my friends, my extended family – but could not shed the echoes of the war.
Here, in Cairo, I keep reliving the trauma of what I had seen, heard and felt in the first four months of the war in Gaza.
When I hear the sound of an aeroplane in the sky, my heart races in fear, thinking it’s a warplane. When I hear the sound of fireworks, I panic, imagining them to be bomb explosions.
I used to think exile would bring safety and peace, but it turned out to be an extension of the war.
The death and destruction happening in Gaza still dominate our lives. The sorrow, pain, and struggle for survival that we thought we had left behind still follow us.
We do not live in a tent flooded by rain and we are not starving; the sound of bombs is not real – it is only the echoes of memories in our minds. But we still live in misery.
My father, the breadwinner of our family, could not find a job for months. When he did, it paid a meagre salary. We face mounting debt and cannot afford basic necessities.
Meanwhile, we have stayed fully immersed in the horror of Gaza. The bombardment, the mass killing, the suffering in torn-up tents – it streams to us on messaging apps hour by hour.
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