Life here in Gaza, two years into a genocide, feels like an exam that never appeared on the syllabus – an exam we never prepared for. Residential buildings have collapsed into piles of rubble, and our homes have been replaced by flimsy tents that protect us from neither heat nor cold. Communication networks barely function, reaching only scattered areas at best. It’s as if we’ve been thrown back into a primitive age, forced to learn the most basic skills of survival. Even lighting a fire has become a daily challenge; we strain to keep a tiny flame alive for cooking or for warmth. We puzzle over which materials catch fire faster: wood, plastic or cardboard.

The war has tested us, but has also tested the world itself – and the world, it seems, has failed.

The genocide’s endless duration has shaken my faith in everything I once held constant. I still remember my anger during the November 2023 truce, when my cousin Ramadan suggested that the war would drag on and on. I snapped at him: “You’re such a pessimist!” But time proved me wrong. I had been overdosing on hope.

That morning, at 7 AM, when the ceasefire officially began, I returned to our home with the eagerness of a child running into their mother’s arms. But the house was empty; my father had gone south with the rest of my family. Because of poor health, I had not been able to follow.

I noticed that our plants had been carefully watered, and heavy locks sealed the doors. I searched for our chickens in the yard and around our neighbours’ houses, but found no trace. In my suspicion I muttered to myself: “It must be Mahmoud, my neighbour – war has changed him. He’s stolen our chickens; no one else would do such a thing.” I swallowed a great deal of anger.

Later, I learnt that my father had left a spare key with Ramadan, who had been checking on the house, tending the garden and caring for the chickens. I rushed to him and demanded: “I want our chickens back.”

He smiled with the sly wisdom of a long-practised trader, and said: “Half for me and half for you, cousin, and I’ll throw in a pair of pigeons besides.”

I laughed and replied: “Like father, like son. Clearly your father taught you business well.”

Then I asked: “So, do I get them slaughtered?”

He answered: “Keep a cock and a hen; they’ll give you eggs.”

Still building castles of hope, I said: “The war’s over. Once my father returns, he’ll buy new chickens.”

Like many people, I believed three days of truce would stretch into another, and another, until the war ended. But my cousin shrugged and said indifferently: “It will drag on for a very long time.”

My heart sank right through my ribs. I glared at him and snapped: “Bite your tongue, man! Don’t be so bleak.”

And so, I owe my neighbour Mahmoud an apology for my suspicions. As for hope – taken in reckless doses – it owes me an apology for selling me illusions.

Two years have passed since I started living the harshest moments of my life: everything I endured, witnessed and even what I heard. Note: one never forgets the sound of hunger. As Gazans, we’ve suffered a deliberate famine that began to bite in December of 2023, when flour and grain vanished from the markets and prices soared beyond reach. The world took note only recently, which is to say far too late. By then, food had become a weapon of control in Israel’s hands: hunger as policy, imposed without mercy, imposed according to the whims of power and politics.

But it’s not the first time that food has been instrumentalised in this way. Old reports, from as far back as May 2010, tell a strange tale: frozen salmon and low-fat yoghurt are allowed into Gaza, yet coriander and instant coffee are banned as “luxury goods”.

Does a cup of instant coffee really threaten Israel’s security? Or does it merely offend the taste buds of a nation holding more than 300 nuclear warheads?

Because coffee was banned – because even the idea of comfort was deemed a threat – we resorted to roasting chickpeas and beans. But what emerged tasted like ashes: it was not like drinking coffee at all. When flour and wheat were no longer available, we ground animal feed, until that too disappeared from the shops. Then we kneaded pasta and rice by hand to bake into bread. Tinned food arrived in paltry rations. As young children opened their eyes in this wasteland, many grew up never knowing the taste of an apple or the sight of a banana. They never learnt the names of fruits and vegetables once taken for granted in every home.

During the feast of Eid al-Fitr, the few pieces of chocolate we had access to were so hard they might break your teeth. It was the first Eid of my life spent without my family, and without a single sweet. That morning, we went to a cemetery overgrown with wild plants. We gathered what we could of an edible herb called sliq, though it turned out not to be sliq at all. I ended up with a stomachache that day.

Hunger was never far. Eventually, I began to feel ashamed of it – angry at myself for feeling hungry in the first place. Visits from friends became heavy because I had nothing to offer them, and when I was the guest, I feared embarrassing those who hosted me. At some point, my body started to give up. I could no longer get out of bed. When I stood, the weight of my head dragged me down. When one is hungry, even sleep is a challenge.

Today, where I live, in the Sabra neighbourhood of Gaza City, people are slowly returning – pitching their tents over the ashes of homes that are nothing but dust. The remnants of war are strewn in the streets: unexploded bombs ready to detonate at the slightest touch, mortar shells, aircraft missiles, and the chemical traces left behind by burning ammunition. In just two days, dozens of children have been injured while playing with what they mistook for toys.

Returning is an act shadowed by fear; people walk the ground as if it holds delayed explosions, haunted by the thought that the Israelis could return to the battlefield at any moment. No one actually believes the genocide has ended, for everything around us screams the opposite. Gaza lives in suspended shock, and recent memory is a burden. All people want now is life – a real life – not a fragile truce stretched thin between two massacres.

Death should not have lingered among us as it did, memorising our faces, chanting our names one by one in grim reverence. Funerals were meant to remain rare, not turn into daily rituals. Death was supposed to stay hidden away – not stare us in the face every moment in the horrific forms Israel keeps inventing. Destruction should never feel ordinary, nor should loss. Hunger, too, must remain something temporary – strange and alien.

The world, when it saw the beast bare its teeth against a defenceless people, should have risen to confront it. Instead, they left us alone, and permitted blood to run in the streets. Broadcast in high definition to every corner of the Earth, our lives played out like a spectacle in some endless horror film. Our blood should never have been made so cheap before the world’s eyes. Silence at the first massacre was shameful; by the second and the third, it had become routine. What can one call this but a resounding collapse of morality?

This war has stripped everything of its meaning, leaving us strangers to the world, learning again how to breathe, how to laugh, how to reach for things without fear. Everything that once felt ordinary now requires courage. A glass of water is no longer just a refreshment; it’s a reminder of the long thirst, of the walks we took in search of a drop to soothe our tired bodies. When I lift a glass to my mouth, I see the endless queues, the faces that are no longer, the people I know who died looking for water.

This pain is not my destiny, and I refuse to make it so. Now I must return to what they call life, but I don’t know how. After all we’ve seen, we are no longer ourselves. My heart feels heavier. I can feel its weight between my ribs. My skin is thinner. My tears taste saltier. My dreams, once experienced in color, have turned grey.