May 6, 2024: The Day I Was Forced To Leave My Home

How can a bag carry a house

How can a heart bear all this

How can I leave my childhood

and go in fear of death?

How can this nightmare end?

We have been robbed of the right to life.

What can we cry about anymore?

I hope I return to my house

My warmth.

My memories

and find this message intact

as well as my home.

May 6, 2024 is a day I can never forget. It was the day my family and I were forced to leave our home by the Israeli Occupation—the day we packed what little we could and left into the unknown. It was the day everything changed.

It started in the middle of the night. I woke up to a sound that I can still hear when I close my eyes— because it happens daily now.. a 2000 pound bomb made by America and detonated by Israel. A bomb large enough to kill a person standing 360 meters away; it was a force that seemed to stop time. My heart froze, my ears rang, and for a second, I didn’t know if I was dead or alive.

When the shaking stopped, I heard my mother’s voice calling us to stay close. I realized the bomb had hit my neighbor’s house. Through the small window, I could see the orange glow of fire, the dust hanging in the air like a heavy fog. I could hear screams, faint at first, then louder—cries for help, for loved ones, for someone to make it stop.

We didn’t sleep for the rest of the night. None of us spoke much, but we all felt the same unspoken fear: What if we’re next?

By dawn, the news spread—evacuation orders. The entire area was no longer safe, and we felt as if we had no choice but to leave. Israel never gives us a choice. We don't have the choice of freedom. We don't have the choice of holiday travel. We don't even have the ability to decide what goods enter Gaza. The word choice seems out of touch in our lives. But today, we had a choice. Stay in our home and die, or leave and hope we live.

I looked around at my family—my mother and my four siblings—and I could see the worry on their faces. How do you leave everything behind? How do you say goodbye to a place that holds your entire life, without even knowing if it’s forever? Israel tried to keep us from living a life of beauty and happiness, but you can not take the beauty out of Gaza. Even when the ground is grey and covered in rubble, Gaza remains beautiful. Palestinians make Gaza beautiful.

We had only a short time to decide what to take. It’s a cruel thing to pack up your life into a few bags. I grabbed some clothes, important documents, and daily necessities. But how can you decide what to leave behind?

My mother moved quietly, holding back tears, trying to stay strong for us.

Finding a way out was another battle. Transportation was scarce, and what was available cost more than most people here can afford. We had to pay a large amount just to get a car to take us to a "safe zone" and later to find out, nowhere was safe. Even as we drove, I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were risking our lives with every mile. The roads were crowded with families like ours—cars packed to their limits, people on foot, carrying their entire lives on their backs. Some of these families had been displaced multiple times already. How can this be? We have lived through multiple wars, but this one feels different.

We passed smoke rising in the distance, reminders of the devastation we were running from. But Israel had already destroyed most of Gaza. Rafah was the last place that felt somewhat safe. Whatever safe means living a life under blockade.

Every time a plane flew overhead, I felt my heart stop. Every time the car slowed, I held my breath. My siblings asked me if we were safe, and I didn’t know what to say. I just held their hands and prayed to Allah we would make it.

Eventually, we arrived at a place miles away. It wasn’t home—just another crowded space filled with families like mine, all of us displaced, all of us uncertain. As days and weeks passed, we heard the news that Rafah had been turned to rubble. Occupation troops carried out an invasion that lasted weeks. My life, my neighborhood, the streets I grew up on—we had no idea what was left.

We haven’t been able to return, and the borders remain closed. Isreal destroyed the Egyptian border crossing. Our only way out. We are stuck, living in limbo, surrounded by fear, with nowhere to run. Every day, we wait. For food, for news, for safety that never comes. Most of all, we wait for an end to this nightmare. For our freedom to be ours and not in the hands of the one's who want us dead. The ones who want to build beach houses on the graves of our loved ones.

Losing your home is like losing a part of yourself. It’s not just the walls and the roof—it’s the laughter shared with your family, the moments you thought would last forever. Now, those moments exist only in my memory.

I want you to know what it feels like to live this way. To leave everything you’ve ever known behind, not knowing if you’ll ever see it again. To fight every day to survive, surrounded by uncertainty, with the world watching but doing nothing to help. To beg the free world to empathize with your pain. To see you as human.

That day, May 6, I lost my only sense of safety. My home. But I refuse to lose hope, and I refuse to lose my voice. I will keep sharing my story because we deserve to be heard, and we deserve to live.

– Anwar Zidane