The Electronic Intifada 30 January 2025
On foot, by donkey cart or car, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians returned north on 28 January 2025.
APA imagesToday, I write this article with my mother by my side. Her hand touches my hair as if to reassure me that everything will be okay and that all the pain has ended.
It is almost impossible to convey what this means to me.
For more than a year, I have been waiting for this moment, always wondering if I would ever see my parents and my siblings again,
We were first displaced in October 2023. Myself, my husband, Ahmed, and my son Zakaria, 8, would eventually be displaced twice further as we left Gaza City to seek safety in the south.
We found no safety, only separation from our loved ones.
We did what we could to survive and help others. But through it all, through the misery, the disease and the cold, it was our determination to return to our home and rebuild our lives that drove us on.
So when a ceasefire was announced on 19 January, and when the road north opened, we did just that: returned.
We walked back, carrying Zakaria and our belongings. I was carrying three bags with my basic clothes. The road was long and very tiring, and took us past the Netzarim corridor that had previously cut off the north from the south.
But my joy that I would see my family after a very long time made me forget all about fatigue.
Solace from the south
My father’s house is in the Daraj neighbourhood of Gaza City. We had been lucky compared to so many others. The house had survived a fire and one wall inside had collapsed, but it was otherwise intact.
The neighborhood, too, bore the scars of war. All homes had some damage and some had been destroyed completely, but it was nothing compared to the devastation further north.
When I first saw my family, I couldn’t control myself. I didn’t know whom to hug first – my mother or my father? My sister or my brother? I wished that my heart and my embrace could hold them all at once.
That moment felt like a dream: I felt as though all the pain I had been through had suddenly vanished. I felt like I had finally returned to life
There is little I will miss about the long cold hours I often spent in our tent in Khan Younis just with Zakaria.
But there is one precious thing I’ve brought home with us. Keeping us company was a little cat that we ended up adopting. We call her Katie. Katie kept us both happy, especially Zakaria. It seemed like a small blessing, some solace amid the despair and a reminder that even in these, our darkest hours, there was something beautiful to hold on to.
So when the day of return came, I couldn’t leave her behind. She wasn’t just a cat to me; Katie had become a part of my life, my daily routine, the hope I clung to every day. How could I leave her there when she had been with me in my loneliness?
I’ve seen things I will never forget. I’ve seen hungry children and families searching for just a piece of bread. I’ve seen men standing helpless, useless, despairing, unable to provide food, safety and water for their families.
I’ve seen great violence wrought on us from the skies, heard the angry crash of bombs dropping on people in tents, borne the grief of the many I knew and loved who were murdered in Israel’s genocidal assault.
Now, as I sit here writing, I see that the day has broken. I know that we have not even begun fixing what has been destroyed and damaged. I know that the road to resurrection is long.
But seeing my mother smile at me, embracing my father and siblings, makes me feel that hope is not dead, and that life can still make up for part of what we have lost.
We haven’t just lost our homes; we’ve lost part of our dignity and our dreams. But we choose to return, to start again, to rebuild what has been shattered – even if we are rebuilding on the rubble of what was once our life.
Do not let hope die. Life may be harsh, but it will give us moments to rise again.
Today, I write this article as a message to anyone feeling weak or broken. I say to you: Maybe one day, you will be as I am now – sitting next to your loved ones, determined that life is still worth living.
Saeda Hamdona is a writer in Gaza.
