Honorable Endings

The morning of November 7, 2025, at seven o'clock, I put on a new dress and a mulberry-colored hijab. Carrying my robe, cap, and a bouquet, I opened the door of my grandfather's house, where I am displaced. I set out like a butterfly, accompanied by my sister, to live a long-awaited day and complete a milestone on a blessed path that must never end, which is my graduation day. It was the day I graduated with a degree in English Language and Literature from the Faculty of Humanities at Al-Aqsa University— the first graduation ceremony held after two years of genocide that claimed the lives of thousands of university students and wiped entire universities off the face of the earth.

We arrived at a terminal and searched for transportation to get to Khan Younis. We found a large blue bus and were the first to board it, then waited until it was filled with passengers. The faces around me were pale and tired, yet awake to fight their own battles born of the genocide, where battles with no truces and no negotiations. I sat by the window, gazing silently at the sorrowful city as the scenes slipped past me and struck a chord in my heart. The scene of tents stretching as far as the eye could see made me scream inwardly: this is not a real home, not the kind of place a human being should live in and find dignity. A tent remains a tent, never a home. Then the scene of rubble was so immense that it could form a mountain of ash in the soul of anyone who looked at it or lived among it. As well as the scene of water jerrycans lined up in endless rows, waiting for the water truck to arrive at the camp so they might, at last, be filled.

Along the road, the bus kept stopping every little while to pick up, drop off passengers and sometimes to let quarrels break out among them. I tried to occupy myself with my memories, recalling the harshness of our academic journey and savoring the end of the road. Memory, after all, is like a collar around our necks—inseparable from us, and we from it. So, I began to replay the reel from the very beginning: the months when our studies were suspended at the start of the war, when the numbness of shock prevailed, and our connection to our minds, our universities, and our teachers was severed. Everything back then was "postponed." Then came the days when we began to reclaim what we had lost, to pull our souls out of the current of collapse that had swept us away against our will. Studying under those conditions felt like building in the middle of a desert with the weakest, simplest means. And then, the phase of awakening: when we realized that education was the only path to rise again, the only way out of the depths of darkness toward the vastness of light. We reconnected with our academic, professional, and intellectual worlds. We regained our balance, and with learning, we soared like a bird that had finally found the sky. In truth, I was lost in that stream of memories, just as the bus swayed through the road—until an ambulance sped past behind us, its siren piercing the air and shattering the reel of recollection. I trembled and asked myself: How can a single sound bring the war back inside us in an instant?

After much fatigue, we finally arrived the outskirts of Khan Younis, precisely the celebration hall, which was built during the war for the few joyful moments left to these grieving people. There, crowds of graduates gathered from all over the Strip, from north to south, from destroyed homes and fragile tents to crown their long journey and honor their struggle with a ceremony where they sang songs of triumph and chanted: "Of course we can do it! Of course, we can face the whole world!"

I turned around and looked at the graduates. Many were weeping, tears flowing freely. Loss was scattered among them, as some had lost loved ones, homes, limbs, belongings, or even entire cities. My friend, Alaa, was there, cradling her little child in her arms throughout the whole ceremony. Amid the applause and cheerful faces, my eyes kept returning to her. She seemed distant, as though her soul were wandering somewhere far away. Knowing her story, I couldn't help but feel a deep sense of loss within me. Just one day before the war began, her husband had stood in this very place, wearing his graduation gown, his eyes filled with dreams and pride. She had celebrated his joy, his future, their shared hopes. But when the war came, Israel's oppressive army stole him from her. It was another life extinguished, another family shattered. Now, she stood there in silence with a faint smile and her eyes carrying a world of grief. I knew that on this day, when everyone around her celebrated new beginnings, she needed nothing more than his presence to feel the beauty of it all, honestly. Amid all that loss, determination unfolded its wings between these resilient people. There were magnificent scenes of rising from the misery of life. Scenes that could never exist without the companions of the journey: parents, spouses, children, and friends. I genuinely believe that these are the fuel that keeps us going, the gentle hand that has always steadied us, the shoulder we leaned on, and that never failed us. I am certain now that no one can make it alone in a life like ours, and no one walks without unseen soldiers by their side. In addition, no enemy can erase a land that has watered its children with knowledge since their earliest days, and no enemy can bury the hope we have nurtured within us. Joy and success belong to us, and we are worthy of them.