I mourn the vibrant life we lived before. But though our faces anxiously turn to the sky, our hands are joined in a solidarity that rises above hunger
E
very year, Ramadan comes as a sanctuary for the soul. For Muslims like me, it is a sacred pause in the chaos of life. But this year, as a woman displaced from the familiar streets of Gaza City to a rented room in Al-Zawayda, I am searching for a peace that feels like a ghost. The world calls this a “ceasefire”, yet from my window the silence feels heavy. We are holding our breath because the fear of death has not disappeared, it has just become unpredictable.
I did not welcome Ramadan this year with the golden lanterns that once adorned our balconies. I welcomed it to the roar of bulldozers clearing the bones of neighbouring houses and with the constant buzz of the zanana, the Israeli surveillance drones, overhead. Even as we stand in prayer, that metallic humming drowns out the adhan, the call to prayer, reminding us that we are still watched and that our “calm” rests at the mercy of a sudden strike.
My heart remains in the ruins of Gaza City. I mourn the vibrant life of Al-Zawiya market, the scent of its spices, and the al-Omari mosque, where our collective prayers once felt like an unbreakable fortress. Ramadan used to mean true warmth to me. I experienced it at my family home in Gaza, in the Rimal neighborhood, where the table brought us together, filled with laughter and peace. Sometimes I would break my fast with my family, sometimes with friends or neighbours, as if the month were teaching us that the heart had room for everyone.
