I want to tell you about my story, a story that has lived on dreams and hope since birth in Gaza.
I am Ruwaida Amer, a 30-year-old science teacher and journalist. I was a refugee girl who spent my childhood in the Khan Yunis refugee camp in the south of the Gaza Strip. Our simple house was adjacent to an Israeli settlement. For eight years, we endured through soldiers storming homes every day, tear gas bombs and young people chanting for freedom. When I was 8 years old, the Israeli army bulldozed my house and my uncles’ houses. We were homeless for two years, until UNRWA helped us find a smaller home.
That house was tiny and crowded for a family of seven. My father worked as a mechanic and driver on a daily wage that rarely exceeded $15. Life was modest, but from childhood I felt responsible for my family and ambitious for myself. I told my father, “Don’t worry. I will finish my university studies and I will help you.” I studied in UNRWA schools, then in government schools. I never forgot the sight of our house in ruins in 2000 — so many photographers and journalists documented that event. I wondered if I could be like them. Years later, I held on to the desire to study and to delay marriage, even as others thought my ambitions were unrealistic.
After 2007, life in Gaza became more difficult with the severe blockade. The house was also getting too small for us because it consisted of just three rooms, which were also incomplete. I was a high school student at that time. I studied hard so I could go to university. My mother gave me the little money she had so that I could study, saying “I want you to learn.”
I finished university as a science teacher and started looking for work. In 2013 it was hard to find a job, so I gathered students in my neighborhood and taught from seven in the morning until seven at night. It was exhausting, but I felt responsible for my family and for my sisters who also wanted to go to university. To ease my fatigue, I began to develop my writing and filmmaking skills. In 2014 I began a career in journalism and joined scientific and educational centers to train children in extracurricular science activities.
Since 2008, we have been living through successive wars. They were draining, and I waited for any country that could stop these wars. But I just kept working long days to help pay my siblings’ college fees and to save to expand our home. Every two years I upgraded something — the kitchen, the bathroom, adding a room. By 2019, I was teaching in Gaza City and saving for my mother’s treatment. That year I began teaching at the Rosary Sisters School in Gaza City. My work improved: I learned English, produced documentaries, and kept a daily routine with my students. That same year, I also worked to help provide treatment for my mother, who had been suffering from spinal problems for many years.
Slowly, our home finally became livable. After years of struggle, I felt I had built a life by my own effort and willpower. For a while Gaza was beautiful. I could provide for my family and our standard of living improved. In 2023 we took the final steps to finish the house. My father lived in great joy and pride. He was happy I had kept my promise and achieved what he wanted. I was looking forward to traveling outside Gaza to get treatment for my mother’s cartilage problem.
Then came October 2023.
The war that began that month was harsher than any before. It brought constant bombing, frantic displacement, siege, hunger, thirst, power outages and loss of communications. From the first day I worked as a journalist, trying to document the events and keep the world informed. Staying connected was a struggle. I had a family to care for — they all needed treatment, food, water and safety.
I was an ambitious, optimistic girl who loved life. Now, I have lost peace and safety and everything beautiful inside me.
Displacement meant being homeless on the street, not knowing where to go. Once we spent a freezing night in a hospital parking lot. Another time we couldn’t find shelter at all. The news was full of losses: friends, colleagues and students. I was devastated by the deaths of students I had taught and who had shared their dreams with me. I lived the happiest days of my life with them at the Rosary Sisters School. Those memories are irreplaceable. This is a different kind of a pain — a pain without death, unfortunately.
Working as a journalist during the war means fighting to be heard while facing internet outages, constant movement and no safety. I used to tell people, “I’m a human being, not an iron woman.” Still, I tried to be strong for others. When I was displaced from my home last May, I felt my soul ripped from my body. I had spent 12 years working and depriving myself to save money for a beautiful home. During the war I worked to provide winter clothes and food amid famine. Then the army forced us to leave with nothing. I fled quickly with my sick mother and a bag holding my devices, leaving behind my clothes and every memory I had built with great effort. I did not say goodbye.
I have always focused on my work and my family, rarely allowing myself a moment to feel. If I gave myself a moment to think, I would lose my mind. Now I worry whether I have another 10 years of the same energy, ambition and enthusiasm. I feel helpless in the face of what is happening. I am often silent, sleepless and sad. I still teach and work as a journalist; I have been loyal to my work and family, but the world has not been loyal to me. It did not save me from this darkness.
I was an ambitious, optimistic girl who loved life. Now, I have lost peace and safety and everything beautiful inside me. What is my fault that I have lived through so much suffering in both childhood and youth? I hope the world learns the meaning of peace and chooses to spread it — because peace means safety, and I have nothing left but the memory of what I fought to build.
