Why I won’t stop telling Gaza’s stories Media

There’s a look I’ve come to recognize — the way a kid’s eyes widen when he sees me, wearing a press jacket and holding a microphone. Not out of curiosity. It’s hope. A fragile, desperate hope that I might have answers I don’t have.

“When will this end?” a boy once asked me, pulling me by the sleeve as I photographed near his shelter. He couldn’t have been more than five years old, his feet bare and covered in dust.

His friends gathered around him, watching me as if I held a secret key to the future. “When can we go home?”

I didn’t know what to say. I never do that. Because I am like them, displaced. Like them, I don’t know when or if this war will end. But in their eyes, I’m someone who might know. Someone who can change something just by being there with a camera.

And so they cling to me. They follow me through the rubble and through the destroyed streets, asking questions I cannot answer. Sometimes, they don’t say anything at all. They walk quietly beside me, as if my presence alone is enough to fill the silence the war has left behind.

I can’t count the number of times my mother pulled me aside after an interview, held my hand tightly, and whispered, “Please…can you help us?” Their voices shake not with anger, but with exhaustion—the kind of exhaustion that sinks into your bones and never leaves.

They don’t ask for much. A few blankets. soap. Medicine for their children. As I stand there, my camera still rolling, nodding, trying to explain that I am here to tell their stories, not to deliver aid. But what’s the story of a new mother who doesn’t even have a mattress to sleep on, let alone her newborn?

I relive these moments every time I sit down to write. They repeat in my mind like echoes – every face, every voice. And with every word I put on the page, I wonder if it will make a difference. I wonder if the people who read my words, who watch my reports, will understand that beneath the politics and the headlines, there is this: A woman washes her baby’s clothes in sewage, A boy rummages through trash to find something to sell, A girl skips school because she can’t afford to buy… Sanitary pads.

I don’t cover politics. I don’t need that. The war speaks for itself in the smallest details.

It’s between the tangled feet under the tents, where families share spaces too small to breathe. This is how children cough at night, their chests heavy from dampness and cold. It is in the eyes of the fathers standing at the sea, staring as if the waves might carry their burdens.

There’s a kind of sadness here that doesn’t scream. It is lingering, soft and persistent in every corner of life.

One day, while I was working near a group of abandoned tents, a girl handed me a drawing she had made on the back of an old cereal box. It was simple – flowers and birds – but in the middle, she drew a whole, untouched house. “This is my home,” she told me. “before.”

before.

This word carries great weight in Gaza. Before the air strikes. Before displacement. Before the war stripped away everything except survival.

I write these stories not because I think they will end the war, but because they are proof of our existence. That even in the face of everything, we held on to something. dignity. Resilience. He hopes.

There’s a scene I come back to often. A woman stands at the entrance to her shelter and combs her daughter’s hair with her fingers because she cannot afford a comb. She softly hums a lullaby that drowns out the horrific sound of nearby air strikes and distant shelling. Her daughter leans against her, eyes half closed, safe for just a moment.

I don’t know what peace looks like, but I think it might look like it.

This is the Gaza I know. This is the Gaza I am writing about. No matter how many times I tell these stories, I will continue to tell them, because they are important. Because, one day, I hope that when a child asks me when the war will end, I can finally give them the answer they’ve been waiting for.

Until then, I will carry their voices with me, and I will make sure the world hears them.

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