It's Ruba from Gaza

Today is the 30th of January and one month of this year has already passed. One out of twelve. Sometimes I wonder if we are going to spend additional years counting down the days of this war. It’s not easy for me to tell the stories in this blog for two reasons: firstly reliving them is double the heartbreak, and secondly I recently made a decision to try and make the most of every moment and to try and be positive whatever the situation is. I did this for a couple of days but then the reality hit me, as if it was giving me a message that I shouldn’t go too far away from it.  I had been praying that it wouldn't rain this winter, because of all the displaced people living in tents. But when I heard that it was going to rain, I decided that I was going to try and enjoy it, and so I went for a walk that morning - something that I had been doing for a long time before the war and I miss it. After a very nice walk in which I finally felt the cold breeze on a rainy day on my face, I deci...

Today is the 26th of January. It’s been a while since I’ve been able to write an entry for my diary and what I hope to be my recorded memories in the future. I feel absolutely exhausted. I’ve had this feeling for a while now, and I just don’t have the energy to write or speak about the situation here. I also don’t want to remember, so that I don’t have to live through the same thing twice. Everything I’m hearing, saying and going through is really very difficult - not just for me but for everyone going through it. So maybe this is why I’m a bit delayed in posting this. Recently I’ve been living through some sad times for the family hosting us. They have a lot of family members missing and one of their extended family members lost a brother, a husband and a son all at once. In another incident there were 20 people killed together at once, here in Rafah. Everyone became so quiet that people didn’t even talk about those things. I didn’t even know - I was just on the balcony trying to get ...

Today is the 20th of January and I still can’t believe we are in the year 2024 already. It feels like we missed the last quarter of 2023. I usually love that time of year because of the holiday season. I haven’t had the chance to leave Gaza for a long time, but when I did I would always enjoy watching people celebrating different holidays and occasions. Time has passed us by and we are now in 2024 and it’s almost the end of January which is unbelievable.  We are also now more than 100 days into the war and for more than 100 days I’ve been living outside my home. For over 100 days I’ve been hosted by a family.  For over 100 days I’ve been living in a room which is not mine, sleeping in a bed which is not mine, using a cover which is not mine, tasting and eating food which I haven’t cooked, staying indoors most of the time with my father and our in-laws.  For over 100 days I haven’t switched a button on and off in order to use a light or any electrical appliances.  For...

Today is the 13th of January and I know it’s been a while since I last communicated with you. I feel like there is nothing new to say - the same terrible difficult things keep happening over and over again. There are still bombings and explosions around us everywhere. Rafah is becoming extremely crowded. As each day passes more people come here. The ongoing attacks on the middle area of Gaza, on Al Nusairat, Al Maghazi and Al Bureij make it really hard for people to continue living there and they are still fleeing to Rafah. The original population of Rafah was around 280,000 people but now there are about 1.8 million people here . When I first came here it was easy to bump into other people who had come from Gaza City and the middle part of the Gaza Strip, but now since it’s so crowded you hardly ever see anyone you know. Now when I need to go out I keep my head down and just try and quickly finish up whatever I need to do and then head straight back home. This is firstly because of th...

Today is the 7th of January and I’m going to share what I spend my time imagining or daydreaming about. First of all the situation remains the same and that may sound simple but it’s not - it just means that every day we hear of more people being killed. Every day we lose more and more of the people we love in this war - old friends, acquaintances, neighbours, people who we used to say hi to.  Every day more and more people also go missing - missing could mean that they’re missing under the rubble or missing because we don’t have any contact with them.  I know I haven’t written for a while but for the past week it’s been so hard to sleep at night because the explosions are getting closer to us. We wake up every 5-10 minutes during the night, sometimes every 30 minutes, because of the sound of an explosion. We then try to go back to sleep. One thing that is giving me relief in this regard is thinking about my home back in Gaza City. I never expected this but it comforts me to t...

I have no idea how this past year has already ended. How did Christmas time pass and the new year start without me even realizing? This was always my favorite time of year. Every year I celebrated Christmas and this year I didn’t even know it was Christmas. I used to celebrate it with my family and we’d also celebrate the new year together. Sometimes when my father was very busy at his shop I’d celebrate it with neighbors and friends from my building. It was always a very beautiful time of year.  So again, I don’t know how it came and went without me even noticing. All we have been thinking about is finding our relatives who were missing. We finally got the good news that my 90-year-old aunt was found. She’s my aunt from my father’s side like I wrote before - she lost two grandchildren - one was her son’s child and the other was her daughter’s.  We finally found out where she was after calling everyone we possibly could. There was hardly any communication at the time but event...