It's Ruba from Gaza

Today is the 29th of November and the truce is still ongoing so hopefully we’ll enjoy another day. The people staying with us in this building are all continuing to have their morning coffee together and discussions are ongoing about politics and what to expect for the future. And it keeps coming up again and again - all we want is to go back home. Everyone wants to go back home, not just me. One of the things everyone says here is, “I’d rather stay in a tent by myself on top of my (destroyed) home rather than staying in other people’s houses.” I still don’t understand how anyone could have the soul, the capacity or the psyche to take over somebody else’s home. It’s unfathomable to me that anyone would want to do this.  Yesterday I learnt that a friend of mine and her husband were both killed. She’s a doctor and he’s a very well known consultant here in Gaza. I know her because she’s the mother of one of the young people I used to work with in the past who was studying in the veter...

Today is the 27th of November and it’s supposedly the last day of the truce. We still don’t have confirmed news on whether it’ll be extended or not and so we’re waiting to hear. I still don’t know what happened to my friend that I mentioned earlier. I only know that she she's still alive but I’m not sure about her husband. She has also lost her three children which is an unimaginable loss, especially as it wasn’t easy for her to get pregnant in the first place and she was only able to have children 7 years after marriage. Today I’m struggling with so many conflicting thoughts and how to manage them. I feel like my thoughts are so mixed up. For example I really want to go back home, to fix it up and to sit there - that is, if my home is still there. But at the same time I feel like I want to emigrate to somewhere else and leave this place forever. Sometimes I wake up in a very good and positive mood and sometimes in a very difficult mood. I have to hold all these feelings inside so ...

Today is the 26th of November and the third day of the truce. It seems like a calm day but the quiet gives our minds the time and space to process things that have happened. Quiet time after the traumatic situations that we have been through means that we’ve had many many ideas flowing through our minds and we’re also discussing them together. I want to explain why I want these diaries out. Firstly my friends outside Gaza ask me so many questions like what is it like, how are you doing, what is happening, what is it like not to have electricity or water? Seemingly simple questions but a short answer cannot explain what we’re experiencing. So I am explaining it here for everyone who has never been through a situation like this.  I’m also writing because I want to preserve these memories as a Palestinian who never wanted to leave their land in Gaza and go abroad at all. Because people and history judge us and will judge us in the future. Our grandparents went through a similar situat...

I took this picture from my balcony in Rafah on a cold winter's day. Today is the 25th of November and it’s the second day of the truce. The night before it started there was a huge bombing next to the building I’m staying in and all the children were terrified and were screaming. It was really chaotic that night. Yesterday when the truce began at 7am the plan was to hopefully start the day afresh but it didn’t turn out to be that way at all.  The moment I learnt that one of the conditions of the truce was that we could not return to our homes in Gaza city, tears started to roll down my face. All I had hoped and dreamed about was to go home. I was yearning for it and desperate to do it but we can’t go; we have to stay here in Rafah.  So yesterday, as my sister has been displaced to Rafah as well, we decided to meet. She’s just a taxi ride away but obviously during the conflict we couldn’t meet unless it was extremely important. We spent the whole day together and we were plann...