Asil Ziara Shares Her Journey of Living with Conflict in Gaza

A Painful Memory from Gaza

"This is the only photograph of my entire family from Gaza, taken during the war in 2014. It is the only one where we are all together. The man in the middle is my father's colleague, who came to Gaza for work during the war," writes Asil Ziara about the sole family photo she has left from 2014.

I have always considered Gaza as a place where time folds in on itself. A closed world – dense, familiar, overwhelming – where you either grow up too fast or not at all. I was the child whom my aunts, older cousins, and even my friends' mothers involved in discussions about family issues, relationships, and daily struggles. My teacher called me "sharp-tongued", not because I was rude, but because I refused to be molded into a gentler, quieter, more acceptable version of myself.

A Journey to Rafah

On Fridays, my family used to drive from our neighborhood in as-Sudaniya along the al-Rashid coastal road to Rafah – a journey of about an hour. On one of those days, Gaza seemed less like a cage and more like a home. I was 12 years old, and my siblings and I joked about old memories – how my brother mispronounced words, the little disasters that became inside jokes only we understood. We never strayed too far from our parents, talking and laughing, before heading towards the shore, as the scent of spiced fish and the cool sea breeze enveloped the day in a warm, familiar feeling.

I always knew I would leave. I remember a family gathering when every girl my age was asked where she intended to study – in Gaza, it was understood, naming local universities as if the question had no other geography.

Departure and Nostalgia

When it was my turn, I said, "To study in Gaza? I am going abroad. I will be a journalist like my father." Some encouraged me. Others laughed. But I already felt the call of the outside world. When I left Gaza in 2019 at the age of 17 to study international relations, it was the first time I flew alone, and because I was under 18, I carried a legal document allowing me to travel alone.

At the Rafah crossing, I stood between my father and my older brother, Omar, memorizing their faces. Once we crossed into Egypt, long hours of waiting in security halls began, a silent panic of not knowing if my name would be called to proceed or sent back.

Life in Exile

My first night in Cyprus, I slept deeper than ever. When I awoke to a loud noise, my body went into panic, as if it were an explosion. I ran into the hallway, only to find suitcase wheels dragging on the floor. Then, my mind caught up with my body: You are no longer in Gaza. That morning, I wandered the hallways looking for a mini-market. Someone told me it was in the basement, but I got lost trying to buy an adapter and some toast.

Everything felt unfamiliar – especially the silence. Nothing buzzed, nothing floated, nothing threatened. This calm nearly frightened me. My first real conversations came during the English preparatory course at university. It was a small class, seeming like a world unto itself: classmates from Cyprus, Turkey, Lebanon, Morocco, and Libya. We exchanged words and accents, and my teacher loved how quickly I learned new vocabulary.

Returning to Gaza

Thus began my journey to understand how to carry my home in perpetual exile. With each year, Gaza began to seem further away until October 7, 2023, changed everything. During the war, I worked remotely with my father, a journalist in Gaza, translating and waiting for messages to know he was safe. Fear found me; I shut myself in a room for months, terrified to sleep. When I finally fell asleep after weeks, I woke up to find out my cousins had been killed. Their names, memories, and stories have stayed with me.

After many losses and through therapy, I learned that trauma exists in the lives of those in Gaza. My struggle and that of others is to learn how to live despite the ongoing pain. Perhaps that is why, in the past two years, I have worked and planned to rebuild my life, hoping to obtain a master’s degree in diplomacy. I want to understand the power structures that influenced my childhood. When people hear "Gaza", many think of "destruction", but for people, Gaza is more than a headline: it is a community, a family, a life. People deserve to live.