How do you carry a home that keeps breaking?

"I always thought of Gaza as a place where time folded in on itself. A closed world dense, familiar, overwhelming where you grow too fast or not at all. I was the child my aunts, my older cousins, and even my friends' mothers would pull into conversations about family issues, relationships, and everyday problems. My teacher called me the sharpened tongue, not because I was rude, but because I refused to be shaped into someone softer, quieter, more acceptable."

"On Fridays, my family used to drive from our neighbourhood in as-Sudaniya down the coastal al-Rashid Street to Rafah about an hour's drive. One of those days, Gaza felt less like a cage, more like a home. I was 12, and my siblings and I joked about old memories the way my brother used to mispronounce words, the tiny disasters that became inside jokes only we understood. They aren't grand memories, just mine."

Gaza is a place where time folded in on itself, a closed, dense, familiar world where one grows too fast or not at all. The narrator straddled childhood and adulthood, being drawn into adult conversations and nicknamed the "sharpened tongue" for refusing to be softened. Small acts—sewing Barbie clothes, coastal drives to Rafah, joking with siblings—form intimate memories that feel like home. From early certainty about leaving to a bold declaration to study abroad and become a journalist like a father, departure came at 17, traveling alone with a court document in hand.

Read at www.aljazeera.com