We are clawing our way through the fog.

It is three in the morning — the hour of insomnia.

A tent stands in southern Gaza, its canvas stretched tight, resisting everything around it.

Outside, a few olive trees rise silently, their branches swaying quietly — unbothered, yet unbroken.

Yet the eye always returns to the tent — that fragile square that has learned to call itself a home.

Inside, the floor is cold.

A thin, worn mattress holds the outlines of restless bodies.

Weary faces beneath the dim light — trying quietly, stubbornly, to live a day that no longer knows ordinary.

Here, days fold into one another, indistinguishable, marked only by the sun dragging itself slowly across the sky.

All attempts to stay were soft futility.

I stepped out of my home as if watching myself from afar — my body moving forward, while my shadow froze at the door.

One step went forward, another hesitated,

as if something inside me had chosen to stay behind.

Zero point awaited me once again — silent, counting each of my breaths.

This year, the drones no longer fire bullets alone.

They have evolved — like everything else in this world.

Now they carry boxes of bombs, descending to the height of windows — to the height of my face, as if they wished to witness my final gaze.

From the window, I felt as if I were inside a video game — yet this time, the blood was real.

Everything unfolded like a carefully designed nightmare:

the sounds, the light, the screams, the dust —

and hearts that no longer knew when to race, when to stop.

Outside, the neighbors were leaving one by one.

The woman who stood on the balcony every day, sharing the latest news — she was gone.

The man who brewed tea and filled our heads with the radio’s chatter — he left without a word.

Even the child who always shouted, “No to leaving” — I never heard his voice again.

All the sounds that once filled the emptiness had become the emptiness itself — silent, and complete.

At sunset, the tanks rolled forward.

The bombardment became random — like an angry child smashing its toys.

shrapnel began scattering across the street,

and below, inside the gate of the house.

We all slept in a single room, claiming it was the safe room of the house — clinging to one another in rhythm with the shots and explosions, like a person clutching their last handhold before falling.

I prayed to God, as I have since the first evacuation order, to keep us safe in our homes.

But this time, there was no answer — or perhaps the answer came in a way I could not understand.

We decided to head south, driven by a situation that had only worsened.

And the night when not a single neighbor remained — our survival was truly a miracle.

The journey stretched endlessly — nine hours of dust, fear, and nowhere.

I whispered softly, “God, save us,”

as if prayer were the last form of language I could still speak.

The first time, I cried for hours.

Now, I cried silently — only halfway through the journey.

Then I became like someone walking through a dream without sound.

I felt as though I were being led — like a lamb to the slaughter,

in a long, tedious line,

without resistance, without awareness — only moving slowly.

Now, I am in southern Gaza.

The drones don’t hum as often, and the planes are farther away — yet stillness no longer belongs to our vocabulary.

Calm isn’t safety; it’s just another form of fear.

Even fear has become ordinary — like breathing.

The air here is hollow — stripped of spirit.

The faces around me have begun to look like the air itself — faded, dust-tinted, dimmed from within.

We move as if the instinct to live has left us.

I see people, hear their voices — exhausted, emptied — as if living, dreaming, and joy were crimes we once committed.

The faces differ, but the loss is the same.

We move with it, as if fate itself had written our path in loss.

Maybe in another life, I will reunite with my home — never to have it taken from me.

Maybe there is another time, when the clock will not shatter.

Cruel, that I must keep celebrating my grief —

the memory of my home,

the memory of a day that was ordinary, then became a fracture in time.

The same scene repeats itself — the brakes, the rush, the vanishing.

When I look back, I watch it disappear from my sight.

Its disappearance will echo in my memory forever.