What Remains in Gaza When Normal Life is Gone

Yazdan El Amawi is the director of Anera’s Gaza office

I have spent my entire life in Gaza, yet today I hardly recognize it. Over the last 20  months, and especially these past three, the familiar contours of home have been reduced to piles of concrete and rebar, with our sense of who we are as individuals and as a society being stripped away in the cruelest ways possible.

Food Is Only the Beginning

People often ask first about food. Yes, it is scarce and outrageously expensive. I can still only just afford a kilo of coffee, but it is a luxury now that most families cannot. For some, that kilo now can cost a sizable chunk of their monthly salary. One egg currently costs what a whole dozen used to. Flour, if you can find it at all, is guarded like treasure. And if someone like me, with a steady job and connections, struggles to feed his family, imagine the desperation of those with no income, no savings, or no digital wallet to access the cash they do not have.

But, truly, the hunger I see is deeper than empty stomachs. It is a hunger for identity, dignity, privacy, and the rituals that once defined our days. We get in long lines alongside our neighbors to fill our jugs with potable water, greeting one another politely with an unspoken acknowledgement that no one can help the other. In these lines, the doctor stands beside the street vendor; the accountant beside the teenager who should be in school. There is no distinction from one to the other. We have lost our individuality and the identities that make us each who we are.

The Collapse of Everyday Life

Showers have become a memory. Without a reliable water supply or electricity to warm and pump it, showers are out of reach for the majority of Gaza residents. I miss the small ceremony of a hot shower followed by a fresh cup of coffee before dawn – simple acts that once anchored my identity as a father, husband and professional.

Education, too, has collapsed. This is particularly tragic in Gaza where it has long been treasured as a path to hope and opportunity. Now, all the universities are destroyed and every school is either rubble or acting as shelters for displaced families. Universities are trying to transform to online learning systems and some temporary learning spaces are available for younger students, but these cannot begin to replace what has been lost and the years that students have fallen behind in their learning.

My grandson, for instance, should be in third grade, yet he has not sat in a classroom for 20 months.

Walking Through a Pilgrimage of Loss

Every morning I step outside to give my family space. In fact, the men of Gaza are outside of their shelters most of every day – a courtesy that now feels like exile. I wander past tents and half‑standing homes, past other men who are merely bodies walking without spirit. We all perform the same pilgrimage: searching for food, for fuel, for news, for meaning. I imagine what used to be – Gaza’s once‑vibrant streets – but it hits me as a painful reminder of a normal life that’s no longer possible.

In the meantime, bombings remind us of the fragility of our lives and the randomness of our survival. Today, I walked with my wife to one of the few stores still accepting digital payments. On a whim, we took a different route. Just minutes later, we learned that an airstrike had hit an intersection we would have crossed. If we hadn’t changed course, I might not be here to write these words.

The Gaza I Miss While Standing in Gaza

What really gets me is that I am homesick even though I never left Gaza. The places I knew are gone. Gaza people love to gather to enjoy meals together, to discuss the latest news over coffees, or to walk along the beach with a slushy. But, while the Mediterranean is still there, the beach is now full of tents where people are sheltering. And the restaurants, cafes and wedding halls lie in piles, no longer destinations or holders of our memories.

When the war ends our task will be to rebuild more than concrete. We must repair our collective identity that has been eroded by hunger, fear and enforced sameness. We will need more than flour and fuel. We will need the places where we can once again be different together: classrooms and cafés, businesses and farms, community centers and stores.

Holding Onto Each Other

Until then, we survive by being there for one another in whatever ways we can. As a humanitarian aid worker, I’m used to offering answers, support and some hope (learn about Anera’s response in Gaza). Now, I often find myself with none to give, and that is its own special kind of pain. Some days my contribution is simply listening to a neighbor’s grief or sharing a little food.

To everyone outside Gaza who asks how to help: remember that we are more than the sum of our emergencies. See us not only as mouths to feed but as students, poets, farmers, engineers, entrepreneurs and coffee-lovers whose lives and culture have been suspended, not erased. When the crossings finally open and the world floods back in, we need you to be there to meet us with the tools we need to rebuild our dignity as well as our homes.

I write this as a chronicle of what it feels like when survival replaces identity. I write it so that when the day comes – and it will! – when Gaza lives again, there will be a record of how fiercely we clung to our humanity, despite every possible effort to erase it.