There is a history in her eyes that is older than she is.

Perhaps that is why some faces in Gaza seem to carry memories that do not belong to them alone. In her heart are a thousand words about death, and in her eyes is a story that began before she was born—when a generation was forced from its land during the first Nakba, carrying whatever it could, leaving behind a home that would later become a memory. The key has passed from one generation to another, as if each generation were saying to the world: We have not forgotten.

What moves me most, however, is our generation—the children of the 2000s and those born around 2011 and after. A generation born under siege, raised through wars, and now living through genocide, yet still holding on to its homeland and to its small dreams.

I greeted the faces before me, offering a greeting accompanied by a sense of apology. It was not an apology for the absence of a greeting, but for the inadequacy of words in the face of the stories these faces carried. In their eyes were a million questions, and in their hearts were mountains of reproach and pain.

Among those present was a girl who had lost her father, another who had lost both her parents, and another who had lost her entire family. There were those who had lost their homes, their photographs, their memories, and the small things that once gave a house its meaning. And among them were those who had lost dreams they once believed they would live long enough to see fulfilled.

Yet, despite all of this, they had not lost the future.

In Gaza, we have learned that killing has many faces, and that it asks neither about age, gender, nor dreams. They have killed the old and the young, women and men, and targeted homes, schools, hospitals, stones, and trees. There was no justice in anything, except that death reached everyone. 💔

But this is another chapter in the genocide: death’s hand reaching even for schoolbooks—the books children carry to nourish their minds and build their futures. 📚🕊️

This is the story of Wafaa Akkiya, a six-year-old girl. On the morning of her first day of school, she went to school carrying a joy that resembled life itself. She carried her books, and perhaps dreams larger than her little heart. But her joy lasted only a few hours. 😔

A diary from Gaza — a testimony of another day of war

Today, we woke to the sound of war. 💔

It was not an ordinary awakening. We were not woken by the morning light, the movement of people, or someone calling our names. We woke to the sound of heavy gunfire and intense bombardment. The explosions came one after another, frighteningly close, making us feel, for a moment, as though we had suddenly returned to the first days of the war.

Suleiman Mansour, or as many call him, the Guardian of Memory.

A memory filled with his images and paintings—works that transcended art to become a form of resistance and a symbol of resilience. He was older than the occupation on this land, and therefore his presence was too deep to be confined to its era; he preceded the occupation in memory and will remain after it in art, in the land, and in our collective consciousness. His story was greater than the occupation itself, and his paintings remain rooted in this land like truth—more enduring than its narrative.

From my childhood, I grew up with one of his paintings hanging in our living room. I did not understand much of its meaning then, but it remained deeply embedded in my memory until our home was destroyed and we were displaced from our land. Only then did I begin to understand what that painting had been saying to me all along.