Shurouq, 31, is a Save the Children staff member in Gaza. Since October 2023, she has been displaced eight times after losing her husband in the first weeks of the war. In September 2025, under relentless Israeli bombardment, she left her home in Gaza City with Karmel*, her 3-year-old daughter. In this account, she tells us about the impact of two years of relentless violence and multiple displacements on her and her daughter.
13 September, 2025 was the eighth time I’ve been displaced.
After surviving 21 months of relentless bombardments in Gaza City with my 3-year-old daughter, I made the heartbreaking decision to flee to the south. I left behind everything: the grave of my husband, the rubble of our home, and the city where I grew up, laughed, loved, and lived the best moments of my life.
Displacement is just a word for many. But here, it’s a full-body experience. It’s not a suitcase and a new start. It’s fire. It’s fear. It’s fleeing with nothing but the barest essentials, if you’re lucky to even have those. The simplest things, like my daughter's summer clothes, become irreplaceable treasures. Markets are empty. Borders are closed. And what little is available is often out of reach - too scarce, too expensive, or too far away.
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This story of displacement and loss is repeated all over Gaza, time and time again. Around 90% of Gaza’s population - around 1.9 million people – have been internally displaced, many like myself multiple times. The latest displacement orders from the Israeli authorities effectively squeeze all of Gaza’s population into around just 12% of the strip - 45 square kilometres.
Making the decision to flee is just the start. Despite having connections, I searched for weeks just to find a roof to shelter us. Every option was too crowded, too damaged, or simply unaffordable. We're now living in a part of Gaza that has been overwhelmed by over a million displaced people – far more people than it was ever intended to hold. Infrastructure is crumbling. There’s little sanitation and respiratory infections, diarrhea, skin diseases, and meningitis are spreading. The morning hunt for the scarce clean water there is has become as routine as breathing.
I’m someone who used to love mornings. But for nearly two years now, my mornings have been heavy, filled not with sunlight and peace, but with scenes that break me a little more each day. I pass children sleeping on sidewalks, their heads resting on pillows next to sewage-filled streets. Families with nothing, not even a cloth to call a tent, sit under the open sky, waiting for a miracle. But there are none. Most of these children and their families are suffering from extreme hunger; many have fled famine - only to find themselves moving from one nightmare to another.
I began working with Save the Children as a multimedia specialist in August. It’s my job to communicate the stories of children who are living through the daily horrors of this war and the unending efforts of their parents and caregivers to do all they can to ensure their survival. As a humanitarian, I try to help my people while I, too, am one of them. As a result, I carry the weight of more than just giving voice for the voiceless. I carry the stories, the eyes, the pain, the unanswered questions: “What are we supposed to do now? Where do we go next?”
I sleep in a cramped room with five other people. My clothes are still in plastic bags. I spend 15 minutes every morning searching for my socks, and yet, I feel lucky. This time, I didn’t lose everything. While not one of her big room full of toys made it, I didn't lose my daughter’s clothes. That makes me feel rich, in a twisted way. Before fleeing the north, I made sure to leave food behind, afraid of what might happen if northern Gaza is completely sealed off. I had to choose between survival here and ensuring my loved ones don’t starve there, so I left some food at the place I was in in Gaza City.
I want to be honest: after two years, I am tired. I am not the strong woman the world loves to praise in headlines. I’m not a superhero. I am a woman who lost her husband, my partner, my home, my past. He was killed in the first two weeks. We were having breakfast together when a wave of intense carpet bombing struck nearby. We ran to the ground floor, I was holding his hand in one arm, and our baby in the other. In just two seconds, everything changed. He moved from standing beside me to standing in front of us. He opened his arms wide, and then the world turned gray and red. His body became our shield. He absorbed the shrapnel with his own flesh, protecting me and our daughter in the most selfless act of love. Just like the heroes in the movies, he gave his life to save ours. He died a hero, not in fiction, but in reality, shielding his wife and only child. At age 31 he left us, before we even knew what we were facing. And I haven’t had the space or time to properly grieve.
I don’t want medals. I don’t want applause. I want an immediate ceasefire. I want the luxury to be able to collapse, to fall apart for just a moment. To cry. To scream.
To say a proper goodbye.
But there’s no time for any of that. Every day is a desperate search for food, for water, for safety, and for a tiny patch of dignity as every day I try my best to do what I can for own daughter, while bringing a voice to the suffering of countless other children in Gaza.
And yet, even in the chaos, my daughter’s eyes, the same as her father’s - keep me going. They remind me that we are still here. That we are still surviving. But we are not whole and not healed. We have made it this far, but only physically.
My daughter is my support system. I dream of a future for her that is free from war, famine, and loss, a future where she can live the kind of childhood that, for many children here, exists only on screens. She lost her father when she was just 11 months old. At the time, I was still breastfeeding her. It breaks my heart to know that she will grow up without memories of him, without even remembering his face. This painful experience opened my eyes to the deep and lasting impact war has on children. It’s what inspired me to join Save the Children, to dedicate myself to supporting children across Palestine, and especially here in Gaza, so they can reclaim their right to a safe, dignified, and hopeful childhood.
*Name changed for anonymity.
