Eid al -Fitr is supposed to be a time full of joy and celebration. The children should run in new clothes, laugh, and collect eidiya (the money feast distributed by adults).

The houses should be filled with the smell of Maamoul and KAAK, and traditional cookies and streets should be alive with gatherings and celebration.

But in Gaza, this is the time of sadness. The air is thick with dust from the ruins of destroyed buildings, and the bombing sound does not give up.

Instead of joyful reunification, families sit between the rubble, and their loved ones are hiking.

Many of us are starving, barely holding life, asking whether the next bomb will fall to us. Nights without sleep, haunted by the memories and nightmares that do not fade.

This will be my first feast without my little sister, Rahhaa. My only sister was my best friends. During the genocide, they clung to each other, and we find comfort in each other.

We spent 13 EIDS together on this land, and the vocal of each of them was the joy of each of them. Since she was able to walk, she woke up before everyone runs through the house, announcing that she started.

She was wearing her new clothes and asking me to make her hair before we visited our grandfather in their homes, sitting with the extended family that gathered there, drinking tea and eating sweets that mothers spent during the preparation days.

This year, there is nothing to prepare, no place to go, no rahaf to share with him.

I didn’t think I would lose her, and I was not ready for her absence. We dreamed of a future when we are always alongside each other to celebrate prominent landmarks, and create a life full of art and words.

I was yearning for her to see her the artist she always dreamed of, to see her paintings in life and testify that the world is getting to know her talent.

We imagined the day I was publishing my first book. How do we celebrate together, knowing that regardless of where life has taken, we will always be the biggest supporter of each other.

I was transferred to me on December 28.

We slept at home when my uncle’s house was bombed in the neighborhood. The explosion also destroyed our house.

The excessive was asleep in the room closest to my uncle’s home and crushing it.

That was the room where I used to sleep. We replaced places just four days before killing them.

Since then, there has been no time for sadness, there is no space to treat loss. Sadness does not facilitate the bombs.

How can you recover when every moment threatens to take a member of his family? How can you find a path forward when the future is stolen?

In the midst of my sorrow, I was reminded that someone understood to kill her less than I do.

While we adults carry unbearable pain, children are left to move in their pain alone. They also have dreams that lost the loss, with fear, due to the absence of those who made their world feel safe. My seven -year -old cousin caught my attention recently.

One afternoon, when I sat on a sofa in another uncle’s house, we took when our house was destroyed, a moon came and sat next to me.

Her little hand reached up, and gently touched my arms. I can say she was thinking.

Shahd, her voice began curiously, “Why are you not in your home? Why aren’t you no longer there?”

My heart exceeded the simplicity of her question, but I felt that he carried the weight of a thousand memories I did not know how to explain to these innocent eyes.

“Our house – it was destroyed. Nothing remains after the bombing. We have lost everything – the walls, memories and the late.”

I stared at me for a moment, and her eyes are broad: “And Rahaf, where is she?”

I knew that Qamar was told that the promotion had disappeared, so her question hit me like a cold storm of wind.

The weight of the promotion was impossible to put in the words again to a very small person, especially a person like a moon, who knew the laughter of the warm arie and its gentle spirit.

I closed my eyes for a moment. My voice was barely whispering. “I am alienated in heaven now. I took us during the bombing, and we cannot return it.”

Her face was full of confusion and innocence. “Why should she go? Why did they take it?”

I shook my hand and I took it out. “I don’t know, Qamar. I hope to explain to you in a logical way.”

I whispered, “I want to see her again. I miss her.”

Tears in my eyes, my heart suffers. “I miss her too. Every day, she will always be with us, in our hearts.”

At that moment, I could only wonder about the day when the moon understands what the war does – not only for the earth, but for people. How long before you realize that even when we try to move forward, the loss of loss remains like a shade.

I don’t want her to understand these things. It is very small on the weight of this harsh reality. You should not feel this type of pain and loss.

I hope that I can take the children of Gaza and hide them in my heart to protect them from terrorism, fear and sadness.

The world expects to be strong, and to have a Somoud (perseverance), but emotional exhaustion to live through war and loss does not leave a big room for anything else.

The weight of survival without the luxury of healing is a burden. There is no closure in the genocide that is still revealing.

There is no space for sadness when survival requires every ounce of strength.

But we adhere to the love of those who lost them, and keep them alive in our memories, words, and battle for existence.

Hope, no matter how fragile, is a resistance.

It makes us look for light in the rubble, for the sake of meaning in absence, for life that goes beyond the mere survival.

It reminds us that we are still here. This matters.