A Survivor’s Diary: The Day I Saw My Future Turn Into a Shelter 🕊️

Dear reader,

I want to tell you about a road I walked one day with my little brother on our way to the hospital.

It was not a long road, but it carried a weight that felt impossible to bear. The sun above us was burning, its heat falling heavily on our tired faces. Yet I barely felt it. The heat of the grief inside my heart was stronger than the heat of the blazing sun. My sorrow had become a fire of its own, a fire that made the world around me feel distant. 💔☀️

As we walked, my eyes met Al-Aqsa University.

I stopped.

For a moment, I was not standing in front of walls and buildings. I was standing in front of a memory. A dream. A future I once imagined.

This was the place where thousands of students and young people once walked with books in their hands and hope in their hearts. A place filled with voices, questions, ambitions, and the quiet promise of tomorrow.

I used to imagine myself entering those gates after finishing high school. I imagined carrying my books, sitting in classrooms, and building the future I dreamed of.

But that day, I saw something different.

The university I once saw as a gateway to my future had become a shelter for displaced families. The halls of learning had become places of survival. The walls that once protected dreams now carried the marks of pain and loss. 🏚️💔

I stood there silently, feeling as if I was mourning a part of myself.

Because war does not only destroy buildings. It destroys the invisible things too: the plans written in notebooks, the dreams whispered by students, the futures that were waiting patiently to begin.

A school is not just a building. A university is not just walls. They are where children become who they want to be. They are where dreams receive their first steps.

And when those places are broken, a piece of an entire generation is wounded. 📚🕯️

I write this not because I want the world to see only our pain, but because I want the world to remember our dreams too.

Behind every destroyed classroom, there is a student who wanted to learn. Behind every tent, there is a family that once had a home. Behind every broken wall, there is a story waiting to be heard.

Please do not let these moments become forgotten images in the news. Remember that behind every number is a human being, behind every loss is a life that mattered. 🤍

I still hope that one day I will return to Al-Aqsa University. Not to look at what was lost, but to hear again the footsteps of students, the voices in the corridors, and the sound of life returning.

I hope Gaza will become beautiful again.

I hope places of learning will rise once more—not as witnesses to destruction, but as witnesses to resilience, hope, and a future that refuses to disappear. 🕊️🇵🇸