Ramadan came to the devastating Gaza. While the rest of the world begins a festive mood for a month of fasting and prayer, we do so with sadness and sadness.

The echoes of the war are still loud. There is no certainty that this ceasefire will continue. People are concerned about what is happening after that. They are afraid that the war will return.

The memory and shock of what we have seen and experienced over the past year is hanging in our minds.

Last year was not the first time that we watched Ramadan during the war. In 2014, I was only nine years old, but I remember well how our Ramadan nights were full of weather and destruction and how we had to get out of our house in the dark, and escaped from the bombing in our time.

But last year Ramadan was different. It was unimaginable in an unimaginable way. Hunger was everywhere. We fasted all day, just to break our fast with a box of chickpeas or beans common to six people. With no electricity, we were pressing on canned foods that are tasteless in the dark. We hardly see each other through the table.

We were far from most of our extended family. My grandmother, aunt, and the cousins ​​whom I used to spend Ramadan were all spread in different places, some of them were displaced in tents and others stuck in the north. The group work month has become a month of separation and isolation.

Ramadan was stripped of his happy spirit. We were yearning to hear Adhan (an invitation to prayer) in Maghrib before breaking our fasting or in FAJR before starting. But these voices have never come. Each mosque was destroyed. There were people who wanted to do the lash, but they were afraid – afraid that the sound of their voices would bring air strikes, and that it would make them targets.

Instead of breaking our fasting into the familiar sound of Muezzin on the loudspeakers in the nearby mosque, we divided it into terrifying missile echoes and shooting.

Before the war, I used to go with my family to the mosque after breakfast to pray and see our loved ones. After that, we were walking around the streets of Gaza, and we enjoyed a vital Ramadan atmosphere before we went home to get fresh qatayf.

But last year, there was no place that we could go to pray Taroya in the genocide.

Even the Great Omari Mosque – one of the most beautiful and most beautiful historical mosques of Gaza, where my father and my brothers used to spend the last 10 nights of Ramadan, listen to the Qur’an received in the most beautiful voices – disappeared, bombed on ruins, crashed beyond confession. The place he repeated once with prayers and peace has been converted into dust and rubble.

Ramadan begins this year during the ceasefire. There are no air strikes shaking the ground as we shatter our fast. There are no explosions frequency in the silence of FAJR. There is no fear of decorating our homes, from hanging colored lights that may make us a target.

Amid pain and destruction, she tries to live – which was long -standing – to return to the streets of Gaza.

The shops and markets that were not destroyed, and the sellers returned in the streets.

Even the great supermarket in Nuseirat, Hyper Mall, opened its doors again. Before Ramadan, my father and sister took me there. We can barely contain our excitement while we entered the bright mall. For a moment, I felt as if we were in time. The shelves are stored again, full of everything we yearned for – different types of chocolate, biscuits and chips. There were Ramadan decorations, lanterns of all shapes and sizes, dates boxes, colorful dried fruits, and moon of religion.

But this abundance is deceptive. Many fill the shelves comes on commercial trucks, which are a large part of the permitted trucks in Gaza at the expense of humanitarian aid. At the same time, these products have become unbearable for most people who have lost their lives and homes.

So what will most families break fast with this year? It will be a little more than canned beans: a simple meal of rice, moloca or any vegetables they can tolerate.

For the first breakfast, my family will get a Palestinian dish made of chicken and bread and a lot of onions. We know that we are among the lucky ones. The vast majority of people in Gaza cannot afford the costs of fresh chicken that reappeared in the market at the pre -war price.

But the archaeological and traditional breakfast is not the only thing that will miss Ramadan tables in Gaza.

More than 48,000 people were killed during the war. Entire families have been eliminated from the civil registry and you will not notice Ramadan this year. In many breakfast tables, there will be an empty seat: a father who does not call his voice to the table to the table again, his patience will never be seen again or a mother who will not attend her skilled hands again.

I also lost the people I love. My aunt’s husband, who used to invite us to breakfast every year. My friends, Shima and Lina, were killed, and they narrated those who used to meet them in the mosque after Al -Tarwai prayer.

The festive spirit has come, but the essence of Ramadan is here. This month is an opportunity to stay away from deviations and fears of normal life and reconnect to our faith. It is the time for forgiveness. It is time to search for a close to God and spiritual flexibility.

Our mosques may have been destroyed, but our faith was not broken. We are still doing Tarawih in the homes and tents of half a constitution, and we whisper all our desires in Dua’a and search for comfort in reading the Qur’an, knowing that God will reward us for all the suffering that we carry.

The opinions expressed in this article are the author of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of the editorial island.