Diana Shams wrote a book because ‘no one explains how to carry your baby through fire, hunger and fear – and still sing to her at bedtime’
She used to worry about screen time. She used to fret over sugar. She used to dwell on what cartoon character might be the right one to put on her son’s next birthday cake.
“I thought being a mother meant sleepless nights, picky eaters, school runs, messy rooms and too much laundry,” writes the author Diana Shams. “I used to think motherhood was hard.”
That was before the start of the conflict that destroyed Gaza. More than 68,000 people have been killed, mostly civilians, and entire cities reduced to rubble by Israel’s offensive, which a UN inquiry found to be a genocide.
During a truce in early 2025, Shams and her family returned to their home and began cleaning away rubble and repairing it. One of her friends abroad suggested she write a book about her experience as a mother. Her laptop was lost under the debris of her family home, so she wrote it on her phone.
