Truce from Ashes

Imagine yourself after a whole year of war—a year where funerals never stopped, where the sound of bombs became the only language of the sky. And then, suddenly, you hear the news: a 60-day truce. How would it feel? Like being pulled out of the water after drowning, like finally breathing after months of suffocation.

The streets came alive again. Children ran barefoot over rubble, laughing as if laughter itself was a form of resistance. Mothers tried to rebuild shattered walls, fixing broken windows with trembling hands, planting a single flower in the cracks of destruction—as if to tell the world: we are still alive. And you too… you allowed yourself to hope. You whispered: _Maybe the nightmare is over. Maybe this time we will live._

But then… sixty days passed. The silence did not last. Until one night, close to 3 a.m., the sky ripped open. Bombs fell from every direction. You woke up shaking, your heart beating like a trapped bird, tears streaming down before you even understood. And then you knew: the war had returned.

From that night, everything collapsed. The crossings were closed for five long months. Gaza became a cage without food, without medicine. People searched for rotten flour, fighting for it as if it were gold, just to bake a piece of black, bitter bread to silence the cries of hungry children. Can you imagine a child dying—not from a bullet, but because there was nothing left to eat?

Mothers broke down, not because their stomachs were empty, but because their hands were empty when their children cried for bread. And you… you crumbled inside. It was not only hunger for food, but hunger for dignity, for life, for a single moment of safety. You cried until your tears ran dry. You learned that in Gaza, joy is never allowed to last, and war always knows how to return—stealing everything, even the moment you start to breathe again.

So imagine this: to rejoice as we rejoiced, to hope as we hoped, and then to wake up, to realize it was all a cruel trick, that the war had come back, sharper, heavier, hungrier. And then ask yourself: _How does a human rise again after all this ruin? How much can a soul endure before it stops believing in tomorrow?