There's a look I've seen – the way a kid's eyes widen when he sees me, wearing a vest and holding a microphone. It's not curiosity. It is hope. The faint, hopeless hope that maybe I hold the answers I don't.
“When will this end?” one boy once asked me, tugging on my sleeve as I photographed near his shelter. He couldn't have been more than five years old, his feet bare and dusty.
His friends gathered around him, looking at me as if I held the secret key to the future. “When can we go home?”
I didn't know what to say. I never do it. Because, like them, I have been fired. Like them, I don't know if this war will ever end. But in their eyes, I am someone who might know. A person, just by being there with a camera, can change something.
And so they stuck with me. They followed me through the rubble and across broken roads, asking questions I couldn't answer. Sometimes, they say nothing at all. They just walked beside me, silently, as if my presence alone was enough to fill the silence left by the war.
I can't count how many times my mother pulled me aside after an interview, held my hand tightly and whispered, “Please… can you help us?” Their words do not scare with anger, but exhaustion – the kind of exhaustion that gets into your bones and never leaves.
They don't ask for much. A few extra blankets. Soap. Medicine for their children. And I stand there, my camera still rolling, nodding, trying to explain that I'm here to tell their stories, not to deliver help. But what about a new mother who doesn't even have a mattress to sleep on, let alone her newborn baby?
I remember these moments every time I sit down to write. They replay in my mind like echoes – every face, every voice. And with every word I put on the page, I wonder if it will make a difference. I wonder if the people who read my words, who watch my reports, will understand that under the politics and headlines, there is this: a woman washing her baby's clothes in sewage water, a boy picking up trash looking for something to sell, a girl missing school because she can't afford sanitary pads.
I don't include politics. I don't need to. The war speaks for itself in small details.
It is in the foothills under the tents, where families share spaces too small to breathe. It is the way children cough at night, their chests are heavy with dampness and cold. It is in the eyes of fathers standing by the sea and staring as if the waves could carry their burdens.
There is a kind of sadness here that doesn't scream. It is durable, soft and persistent, in every corner of life.
One day, when I was reporting near a neglected group of tents, a girl gave me a drawing she had drawn on the back of an old cereal box. It was simple – flowers and birds – but in the middle, he had painted the house, complete and untouched. “This is my house,” he said to me. “Before.”
Before.
That name carries a lot of weight in Gaza. Before the wind blows. Before removal. Before the war it took away everything except survival.
I am not writing these stories because I believe they will end the war, but they are proof that we were there. That despite everything, we hold on to something. A shadow. Strength. Trust.
There's a scene I keep coming back to. A woman stands at the door of her shelter, brushing her daughter's hair with her fingers because she cannot afford a comb. He softly hums a lullaby that drowns out the raucous sound of close-up air strikes and distant bombardment. His daughter leans against him, eyes slightly closed, safe for a moment.
I don't know what peace looks like, but I think it might feel like it.
This is the Gaza I know. This is Gaza I am writing about. And no matter how many times I tell these stories, I will continue to tell them, because they are important. Because, one day, I hope that when a child asks me when the war will end, I can finally give him the answer he's been waiting for.
Until then, I carry their words with me, and I will make sure the world hears them.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.
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