I feel like the life I had before the war was all made up

“I do not think that God intended that people at the end of their twenties live with their parents,” said Hanya Aljamal.

She drags on the balcony of the tiny apartment where she lives with her mother, her father and her five adult brothers and sisters – because it is the only place where she can get any peace and calm.

Two years ago, Hanya, 28, worked as a English teacher and lived in his own dish. She posed a possibility of colleges in the United States to make a master’s degree in international development and, in progress, a scholarship to pay. Things were going well – but life is different now.

Like most days, Sunday begins with a morning coffee on the balcony, while Hanya looks at his neighbor, a man in the 70s, carefully taking care of pots of herbs, sowing and plants in his tidy garden, just in front of a breath.

“It looks like the purest form of resistance,” explains Hanya. “In the midst of all this horror and this uncertainty, he always finds time to develop something – and there is something absolutely beautiful on this subject.”

Hanya lives in Deir Al-Balah, a city in the middle of Gaza, a section of 25 miles at the southeast corner of the Mediterranean Sea which has been a war zone since October 2023. recorded an audio newspaper that she shared with the BBC for a radio documentary What is life like.

The school where she taught had to close at the start of the war. Hanya became a teacher without students and without a school, her sense of who she slipped through her fingers.

“It is very difficult to find a goal in this period, finding a kind of comfort or meaning when your whole world collapses.”

The apartment HANYA has shared with his family has been his fifth house since the start of the war. The UN estimates that 90% of the gasans have been moved by the war – several times. Most Gazans are now living in temporary shelters.

Monday, Hanya is woken up in bed at 2 am.

“There was an explosion very close to it was then followed by a second, and a third,” she said, “it was so strong and very frightening. I tried to calm down to sleep.”

The Israeli government claims that its military action in Gaza aims to destroy the capacities of Hamas, which is described as a movement of Islamist resistance. It is appointed a terrorist organization by the United Kingdom, the United States, Israel and others.

The military action of Israel began after Palestinian groups armed with Gaza led by Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people, most of them and taking 251 hostages.

So far, the Israeli army has killed more than 56,000 people in the conflict – majority civilians – according to the Gaza Ministry of Health, which is managed by Hamas. Israel does not currently allow international journalists to report freely since Gaza.

HANYA works for a help organization called Action for Humanity and spends the day to one of their projects. A group of girls wearing white t-shirts and with keffiyehs attached around their size, then participate in a group therapy session.

We are talking about what your home means losing, others talk about losing their goods, their friends, someone they love. And then we suddenly start to cry and everyone is silent. A teaching assistant takes the girl to comfort her in private.

“And then someone tells me that she lost both parents,” said Hanya.

Tuesday, Hanya looks at five colored kite hovering in the sky from her balcony.

“I like the kite-they are like an act of active hope,” she said. “Each kite is a couple of children there while trying to have a normal childhood in the middle of all this.”

Seeing the flying knees fly makes a good change in drones, jets and “killing machines” Hanya is used to seeing her apartment, she said. But later in the evening, “the night orchestra” of nearby drones bursting on discordant terrain begins. She describes the sound they develop as a “psychological torture”.

“Sometimes they are so noisy that you can’t even listen to your own thoughts,” she said. “They are sort of a reminder that they look at, wait, ready to jump.”

Thursday morning, Hanya hears noisy and coherent shots and wonders what it could be. Maybe the flight. Perhaps a lawn of lawn between families. Maybe someone defends a warehouse.

It spends most of the day in bed. She feels dizzy every time she tries to get up and puts her with the effect of fasting in front of Eid Al-Adha, while she is already very malnourished.

Hanya says that the lack of control over what she eats – and the rest of her life – has a big psychological impact.

“You can’t control anything-not even your thoughts, not even your well-being, not even who you are,” she said. “It took me a while to accept the fact that I am no longer the person I identify.”

The school where Hanya taught was destroyed, and the idea of ​​studying abroad now seems very distant.

“I felt like I was Gaslit,” said Hanya, “as all these things were invented. As none of this was true.”

The next morning, Hanya wakes up to the sound of the chirping birds and the call to prayer.

It is the first day of Eid Al-Adha, when his father generally sacrificed a sheep and that they shared the meat with the needy and their loved ones. But his family cannot afford to travel now and there is no animal to sacrifice anyway.

“The whole population of Gaza does not eat any kind of protein, outside the canned beans, for three months now,” she said.

Hanya’s family discovers that one of his cousins ​​was killed as he was trying to get help.

“To be honest, I did not know him very well,” she said, “but it is the general tragedy of someone hungry, looking for food and being pulled in the process that is quite grotesque.”

There have been several shooting incidents and hundreds of deaths reported to distribution points or near help in recent weeks. The circumstances are disputed and difficult to verify without being able to present themselves freely in Gaza.

Hanya knows at least 10 people who lost their lives during the war. This issue includes several of his students and a colleague who had engaged a month before the start of the war. She was the same age as Hanya and shared her ambition.

Hanya updates his CV to remove the name of his university professor. He was his referee and his writing mentor – but he died now too.

“This is a huge thing when someone tells you that they see you, that they believe in you and that they bet on you,” she said.

HANYA does not think that she is weakened for any of these people properly, and says that she needs to ration her emotions in case none of her nearby family is injured.

“Mourning is a luxury that many of us cannot afford.”

The singing dicks mark the start of another new day, and Hanya takes a beautiful pink and blue dawn of the balcony. She says that she has developed a habit of looking at heaven as an escape.

“It is very difficult to find the beauty in Gaza. Everything is gray, or covered with soot or destroyed,” explains Hanya.

“The only thing about the sky is that it gives you colors and a respite of beauty that lacks the earth.”