North Gaza, Palestine – We had no house to return to. And Gaza City, which we knew no longer. But we returned.

Why? Perhaps nostalgia for our previous life – before October 2023. Perhaps the emotions we left before us The displacement to the south He remained, waiting to welcome us.

In both cases, the reality that received us was harsh and unfamiliar. I realized how many strange people became in my city, where I spent nearly 30 years of my life.

I wandered in the streets that I could no longer get to know, lost amid overwhelming destruction. I struggled to find my way from my destroyed family’s house to my husband’s house, which, although he still exists, bears the deep war scars. I walked in one street, to another – without familiar landmarks for my detection.

No communication networks, no internet, no electricity, no transmission – or even water. My enthusiasm turned to return to a nightmare – ruin and destruction wherever he turned.

Numbness, toured the residues of the broken family homes. My goal was to reach the place where my house stood. I already knew he was no longer – I saw pictures.

But standing there, in front of the ruins of the seven -storey building, where I made many memories with my family, I was silent.

House can be rebuilt

One of my neighbors, who also returns from the displacement in the south. We exchanged broken smiles as we stare in the wreckage of our lives. She was more fortunate than me – she managed to save some properties and some old clothes.

But I did not find anything. My apartment was on the first floor, buried under layers on layers of debris.

My colleague, photographer Abdullah Abu Rish. I told him that I am not shocked, not even any emotion. I was not sad, but I had entered a state of Emotional numbness Anesthesia is self -imposed, and perhaps the mechanism of survival may adopt my mind to my madness from madness.

My husband, on the other hand, was clearly angry, despite silence.

We decided to leave, and while I turned my back to my destroyed house, deep pain took place on my heart. There is no shelter now, there is no place to contact it.

But what prevented us from collapsing is to know that we are not alone – an entire city stood in a state of ruin.

“At least we survived, and we are all safe,” I told my husband, and he was trying to relieve him. After that, horrific memories are spent over the past 15 months – roaming Hospitals and refugee camps – rush again. I mentioned: “We are better than those who lost their entire families, better than the little girls who have lost their limbs. Our children are safe, we are safe. House can be rebuilt.”

We say this often in Gaza, and this is true. But it does not erase the weight of the loss of his home.

“Be careful with water”

Unable to walk more, we have made our way to my husband’s house. We were told that it is still existing, but as we approached the scenes of destruction, we were unable to identify the building.

This was where we were living now, in the remainder: two rooms, a bathroom and a kitchen.

But again, there was no shock space here. Request to survive adaptation, regardless of our lack of. This was the rule of war.

Inside, we found comfort. My husband’s brother arrived in front of us, and he cleaned some water slightly. His only warning: “Be careful with water. Nothing remains in the entire area.”

This individual sentence was sufficient to drain the last ounce of hope. I felt a mixture of despair, nausea and exhaustion. I only thought of water – just water.

The sewage system was destroyed at home. The walls are torn by bombing. The ground and the first land were completely flat. Life here is perfect and completely dark.

What made it worse is the renewed shock of looking at the balcony in destruction as much as the eye can see – very vast, very overwhelming to allow the escape of shock.

My friend who stayed in the north a lot told me: “The north is completely destroyed. It is not applicable.” Now I believed it.

Mom’s dresses

The next morning, I went to my father’s house in Sheikh Radwan, prepared for what I will find because I knew, we have already sent our pictures of pictures – the house was still there, but it was destroyed with fire.

the Israeli army It remains for some time before setting the fire when they withdrawn, we were told.

We even found a video on Tiktok, a soldier who photographed himself as he was eating McDonald’s sandwich in the living room of my modern sister while watching neighboring homes.

I wandered at home, soaked in a flood of memories that were reduced to ash and knees. Only one room had survived from the fire: my father’s bedroom. He did not touch the fire.

I entered my mother’s room. I lost my mother on May 7, during the war.

Her clothes are still hanging in the cabinet, and embroidered dresses that were not touched by the fire. Its property, the Qur’an, the chair of its prayer – everything remains, only wrapped in heavy dust and broken glass.

Everything in comparison with the moment that stood before my late nation’s treasury, tears compete when she gently recovered and dust.

“This is the dress that I wore for my brother Muhammad’s wedding,” whispered to myself. “This is one … for a Mortaz wedding.”

I held my phone and called my sister, I am still in the south, my voice shivering between sighs and joy: “I found the embroidered Mama dresses. I found her clothes! They didn’t burn!”

She was shook happy, declaring immediately that she will run to the north the next morning to see our mother’s property.

This is what life here has become – the rubble everywhere, yet we rejoice in any part, that is, a topic that links us to the past.

Imagine, then, what it means to find the only concrete effects of our precious losses – my beloved mother.

It is not Gaza that I knew

Two days later, after siding the debris and memories, I forced myself out of my sorrow.

I decided to visit the Baptist Hospital in the morning, in the hope of meeting with his fellow journalists, restoring some self -feeling and trying to work on new stories.

I walked for a long time, unable to find transportation. Soon my clothes were covered with dust – everything that remained after the buildings were crushed by Israeli bombs.

Every person was the same, painted in layers of gray from head to toe, and the eyelashes weighing the debris.

Whoever around me, people wiped the wreckage of their homes. The stones rained from the upper upper floors while men and women hard the rubble, dust escalated across the air, and swallow the entire streets.

A woman stopped me and asked where she could recharge her phone balance. I hesitated, then I moved away: “I am sorry, aunt, I am new here … I don’t know.”

I walked away, shocked my response. My consciousness accepted – this is no longer this Gaza.

I used to know Gaza by heart. Every Street-Al-Jala, Cami Camp, Sheikh Radwan, Rimal, Capricorn. I knew all the back roads, every market, every famous bakery, every restaurant, every café. I knew exactly where to find the best cakes, the most elegant clothes, telecommunications companies, and Internet service providers.

But now?

Now, there are no features. No street marks. No reference points. Is this important anymore?

She continued to walk on Al -Jala Street, and I struggled to put the past on the rubble. Sometimes she succeeded, sometimes a picture of the study later took, to compare it to what it was before.

North and South

Finally, I found a car wandering on my way. The driver drew me to sit next to a woman in the front seat. At the back, five other women and a child were pressed together.

Along the way, the driver picked up another passenger, as he gathered it in the last space available.

I felt every moment as if it was a mistake – a plus system in my mind.

In the hospital, my memories returned to Al-Shuhada Hospital in the residence in Deir Pala, where hospitals became a refuge for the only journalists-the only places with electricity and the Internet since the war began.

This time, the faces were different, and it was clear that journalists from the north had suffered from this war completely different from how we had in the south.

I hesitantly moved through the corridors, whenever we faced a journalist, whispered to Abdkim: “Is this person from the north? Or were they with us in the south?”

It was a real question. Conversations, familiarity and weight of words – they all felt different, depending on the place where we endured the war.

Yes, there was death and destruction in the south. But the matter was different in Gaza City and Northern Gaza – people here endured the pain that we did not do.

When I got to know a colleague from the south, I lit up my face and stopped, keen to speak, and share the stories of the impossible trip along the Rashid road, and asked about the first glimpse of the city, about the moment they saw the homes of their families.

It was when I really understood: We felt strangers in our city.

The struggle for belonging again

The Israel war not only reshaped the Gaza scene, as well as the people inside it. New identities were formed under the fire, and we divided in ways that we never imagined.

A painful bitter fact – we lost Gaza, over and over again, its people, its soul, ourselves.

For 15 months, we thought that the greatest nightmare was displacement – this exile was the most destitute. People cried home, and they only dreamed of returning.

But now, the return seems more merciful. In the south, the “displaced” was called us. In the north, we are now “returning”, the people who continued to blame us to leave when the evacuation orders came.

Sometimes we also blame ourselves. But what is the option we have?

Now, we carry a quiet naked – an unannounced small sign that has lived in our hearts since the day we left, and we see a reflection in the eyes of those who have been.

I imagined that the day we went back to the north will celebrate the end of the war, but I wandered in the devastating streets, I realized: I am still waiting for this goal, the moment we can say: “This chapter has finished bloodshed.”

I yearn for the last period, so we may start again – even if the beginning is painful. But there is no period. No closure. Infinitely.

Myself walked forward, and I clung to my clothes that I do not bother to get rid of it. Mix tears with rubble, and I do not spend them away.

The truth is that an open fate has been abandoned, a road without a direction: we lost. We have no power to rebuild. No energy to start again.

We have lost this city, my friends.

Gaza, which we loved and knew, died – defeated it and cut it alone.

But despite everything, he still lives inside us.