"Two years since I heard the morning bell at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, sat at my desk and raised my hand during my favourite class. Sometimes I still vividly remember the sounds and smells: chalk dust, pencil shavings, laughter echoing down the halls. But my school no longer exists; it was bombed by the Israelis soon after the war began."
"The tent walls flap in the wind, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We queue for water and food. Electricity is a dream and privacy doesn't exist. Hope feels fragile. At night, I look up at the stars through the holes of my tent and wonder if my friends see the same sky. Some message me when they can, saying they miss school and have kept their old notebooks; like treasures from a lost world."
"I once dreamed of becoming a teacher to help Gaza's children learn, even when life was hard. Now I dream of being a journalist to write, to speak and to show the world what it means to be a child in Gaza. I want to tell our stories of fear and hunger, but also courage. Because even here, amid death and ruins, our voices refuse to be silent."
A 12-year-old girl from al-Mawasi, Khan Younis has not been inside a classroom for two years after her school, Khawla Bint al-Azwar, was bombed early in the war. Books were burned and some friends were killed; the last in-person school day was 7 October, marked by air raid sirens and frightened children. The family now lives in a crowded shelter with tent walls that offer little protection, no reliable electricity, and queues for water and food. The child keeps memories of school and feels guilt over lost notebooks, shifting ambitions from teaching to journalism to record fear, hunger, and courage.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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