Since the ceasefire came into effect, I’ve been searching for a way out of all the horrors that surrounded us in Gaza, but I can’t find one.

As the guns fell silent, my mind filled with the image of the disaster and my memory was flooded with pictures of the people I loved who were killed in the war. My heart began to bleed with the pain of loss.

Two years of genocide left no room for mourning what the war had taken from us. Even grief itself became a luxury we could not afford. I had no choice but to survive each time – to get up, face another day and resist the thought of an end hovering above us every moment.

As for me, I am still living in the same tent I fled to two years ago. A worn-out tent that has lost its colour, a mirror of our exhausted souls, faded and lost between what we’ve lost and what can never be recovered.

Life in the tents: A long wait beneath the sky

Two years have passed, with their freezing winters and burning summers and the tents of Gaza still stand like weary bodies struggling against time.

In winter, the ground beneath them turns into thick mud that sticks to feet, soaks blankets and dishes and fills the nights with the sound of children shivering as raindrops leak through torn roofs and fall on their faces. In the morning, people step out in muddy shoes, trying to dry what remains of their clothes, while the cold wind plays with the tattered tents.

In summer, the tents become closed ovens. The heat is so intense it’s almost impossible to breathe and the air feels heavier than stone. People lay their blankets outside, searching for a breath of air, but the sun is merciless and the dust never settles. The air smells of melting plastic and mothers keep complaining about the lack of water, broken fans and no electricity.

These tents are no longer temporary shelters. They have become cities of fabric stretching to the horizon, where suffering accumulates and voices intertwine. Between one tent and another unfold stories of waiting, of postponed hope, of lives lived on the edge of possibility.

Night in the camp carries no peace; it is filled with heavy silence, as if the earth itself groans under the weight of exhaustion and humanity.

Nothing now ties us to life except a thin thread of hope and sometimes I feel it is about to snap. I walk through the camp and see thousands of faces that look like mine, faces worn down by patience, searching for life in a place where life no longer exists. Each of us carries our story on our shoulders, and together we share one pain, as if we were a single family that lost its home and dreams all at once.

Among the rubble: The homes that will not return

The Israeli war machine reduced to rubble the house I had been counting the days to return to. It was the same house that had been destroyed in the 2014 war, which we had painstakingly rebuilt after long years of patience and effort. Then, in 2024, the occupiers came again to demolish it. But this time, the destruction was even worse. We hadn’t even had the chance to create new memories there or to enjoy a brief moment of joy before everything turned to dust.

In Gaza, houses are more than walls; they are our memories. They hold our old photos, our small celebrations, the scent of coffee and the echoes of our voices from when life was still possible.

When a house is demolished, it’s not only the walls that collapse; it’s the family’s entire personal history that crumbles with them.

Whenever I can get close to the heap of ruins that was once our home, I feel as though I am visiting a grave – not the grave of a person, but of a life that once existed there.

A memory heavy with sorrow

I can no longer look long into the eyes of our relatives or neighbours. In every glance, there is unbearable pain. Our hearts are too small to carry so much loss. Even words of condolence have lost their meaning. How can language comfort a mother who has lost her children, or a brother searching for what remains of his family under the rubble?

I live in fear of simple questions like, “Where is so-and-so?” or “We miss the one the occupation killed.” Such innocent questions can awaken the grief of two entire years. One name is enough to destroy everything I have tried to rebuild inside me.

A few days ago, my cousin Ahmad, 23 years old, was released in a prisoner exchange. He had been a nurse in the children’s ward at Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis when he was abducted by the Israeli army. He spent about 18 months in detention.

I went to see him – surrounded by pain but hoping, somehow, to find a moment of joy. For the first time in two years, I saw someone return after being taken away. The genocide had taught us that those who go missing never come back; absence always means death.

He spoke of the daily torture, being beaten, electrocuted and waterboarded, of starvation and disease. He said they were deprived of food and sleep for days. He spoke in a faint voice, as if afraid that remembering would make the horrors return. Then he suddenly stopped and asked about his relatives. I hesitated before answering, but silence spoke louder than words.

He soon learned that three of his relatives had been killed, along with dozens of neighbours. That moment felt like another collapse – a new layer of grief added to a mountain that never stops growing.

After the genocide: The pain no one sees

The ceasefire in Gaza is not an end to the tragedy; it is the beginning of another chapter. It is the moment when each person realises the full extent of what they have lost.

During the genocide, fear overwhelmed everything. There was no time for mourning or reflection. But after the war, the silence forces you to confront all that you tried to forget.

Now, as I walk among the tents, we share our stories and search for meaning amid the ruins. Some dream of rebuilding their homes; others have no photograph left to remember them by.

The entire community lives on the margins, waiting for a miracle: the miracle of reconstruction, the miracle of open borders, the miracle of return, the miracle of hearts healing from layers of pain.

But no one outside sees the details of this endless waiting. No one sees how we try every day to create life from ashes, to rebuild the world inside a tent, to laugh so the children won’t break.

The war has ended on paper, but within us, it continues – in memory, in our eyes, in every shattered stone and in every child who asks, “When will we go back home?”

The ending that hasn’t come

Sometimes I look at the faces in the camp and wonder: how can all this pain be reduced to a single phrase – “truce” or “ceasefire”?

This is not the end of the war; it’s another form of its continuation.

What we live now is the aftermath of fire – the destruction left behind by the battle that raged within and around us, in the places we lived and in the memories we still cling to.

We keep going, struggling to stay alive, even though the life we once knew has vanished.

And perhaps, when we write and tell what happened, we do it not only to grieve, but to say that we are still here.

That this land, despite everything, did not swallow us. That we carry our story with us and we refuse to let it be erased, as they wished.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.