Two years ago, this war began. I was barely fourteen then.
Today I am almost sixteen, after living through two years that felt like a hundred filled with pain, displacement, and loss.
Two years of war that devoured our dreams and childhood, stealing our sense of safety, our education, our very lives.
I used to be a top student, full of big hopes for my future.
But I’ve lost two whole years of learning, two years of my life, my future, my self.
This cursed war destroyed everything around us.
It changed our faces and left our bodies frail from hunger and deprivation.
It denied us food and water, medicine and rest, everything that makes life bearable.
It erased all our beautiful memories, stole our laughter and peace, and left us wearing the faces of survivors.
My family and I have lived between bombings and ruins, hunger and fear.
We moved from place to place searching for shelter, sometimes sleeping under the open sky,
sometimes in places unfit for life, between the freezing cold and the burning sun.
I’ve seen the fear in my sister’s and brother’s eyes, and in the faces of the few friends who remain.
I’ve seen my father, sick and jobless, helpless to provide us with food.
And I’ve seen my mother try to stay strong while everything around us collapses.
Two years of impossible survival. Two years of waiting for a ceasefire that never came.
And today, after the announcement of a new ceasefire agreement, we feel both hope and fear.
We pray that this time it will hold, that this time it will be real.
Hope that this nightmare will finally end, and fear that we will be let down once again,
as we have every time peace seemed near and this cursed war continued.
Please, don’t leave us alone.
Help us. Share our voices. Support us in any way you can.
Gaza today is not a place for the living. It’s a witness to the world’s silence.
My name is Ahmad, from Gaza.
I once dreamed of becoming something great.
But now I only dream of a day without bombing, and a morning that feels like the ones we used to know before the war.
🇵🇸 Hope that this time, peace will finally hold.