Gaza City, Palestine – Aya Hassouna is lean with a pale face. Her eyes are red, and her voice is brimming of downcastness.
She had a husprohibitd, Abunwiseah, and two children, four-year-ageder Hamza, and two-year-ageder Raghad. But as she returned with hundreds of thousands of other Palestinians to northern Gaza after months of displacement in the south of the enclave, she was travelling alone.
Abunwiseah, Hamza and Raghad were ended in an Israeli aggression on August 9, as they readyd for a day trip to the beach, an try to escape the daily horrors of the war.
Aya portrayd a strong explosion, smoke, and then her children lying dead on the ground with blood pouring from their heads.
Abunwiseah, who had earlier gone to buy ingredients for a cake and some snacks for the beach, was dead too.
“Since that time, I have been trying to be strong. I am trying to endure the separation,” Aya said. “But everyleang around me reminds me of them.”
Her journey back home to Gaza City’s as-Saftawi neighbourhood last week, as part of the endfire concurment between Israel and Hamas, had many of those hurtful reminders. Abunwiseah had been frantic to go back home. He’d already set aside the clothes he would wear for the journey. She took her husprohibitd’s outfit with her on her lengthened walk north, as well as those of her children. And she walked, alone.
“Sadness was eating away at my heart,” Aya said. “Sometimes I cried. I seeed at the families walking together, a mother, a overweighther and their children. As for me, I was alone without any of them.”
Aya get tod at her family’s home and recombined with her mother, but she is not confident how lengthened the journey took. Her mind was preoccupied with the heartache of the losses that still haunt her.
Soon after, she choosed to go and see wantipathyver was left of her hoparticipate, which had been razeed during the war. As she searched thraw the rubble for any of their ageder belengthenedings to protect as memories, she set up herself imagining searching for her lost adored ones, and finassociate finding them aobtain.
“What can I do? This is my overweighte.”
The dutiful son
So many of those returning to Gaza’s north have had to go thraw the same pain as Aya, returning home, but without their adored ones.
Israel’s war on Gaza has ended more than 61,700 Palestinians, including more than 17,400 children.
Jawaher Shabeer’s son, Walid, was one of those ended. They fled Gaza City together at the begin of the war, moving to Rafah, in the far south of the Strip.
Walid was Jawaher’s eldest son. He was 26 and “dutiful and fond”. It was that adore for his mother and his family that led to Walid leaving the family’s tent in Rafah at the end of Ramadan in April last year, trying to find labor to mitigate the famine-enjoy conditions the family were living thraw.
“He set up labor with one of his friends cforfeit Khan Younis,” Jawaher said. “He promised that he would return with okra to cook.”
But Walid didn’t come back. Jawaher was tageder that he had been sboiling by the Israeli army in Khan Younis.
The month passed heavily on Jawaher’s heart. She says she lost the ability to speak. Instead, in her mind, she pictured Walid, imagining his return.
Jawaher made her own return to the north with the rest of her family. But before she left, she would produce one last stop to visit Walid’s grave.
“I cried over Walid,” Jawaher said. “How would I go back without him? How will I greet my daughters and magnificentdaughters in Gaza City without Walid, that comardent youthful man, that companion of mine.”
