I mourn the vibrant life we lived before. But though our faces anxiously turn to the sky, our hands are joined in a solidarity that rises above hunger

Every year, Ramadan comes as a sanctuary for the soul. For Muslims like me, it is a sacred pause in the chaos of life. But this year, as a woman displaced from the familiar streets of Gaza City to a rented room in Al-Zawayda, I am searching for a peace that feels like a ghost. The world calls this a “ceasefire”, yet from my window the silence feels heavy. We are holding our breath because the fear of death has not disappeared, it has just become unpredictable.

I did not welcome Ramadan this year with the golden lanterns that once adorned our balconies. I welcomed it to the roar of bulldozers clearing the bones of neighbouring houses and with the constant buzz of the zanana, the Israeli surveillance drones, overhead. Even as we stand in prayer, that metallic humming drowns out the adhan, the call to prayer, reminding us that we are still watched and that our “calm” rests at the mercy of a sudden strike.

Majdoleen Abu Assi is a project coordinator and humanitarian practitioner based in Gaza, Palestine

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