“If I said life since July 7 has literally been a prison, I wouldn’t be exaggerating,” says 26-year-old Hadeya Kuhail. “My husband and I have to deal daily with the issue of expecting death. What if one of us is gone? We have agreed on someone to take care of our three kids if we both die. That is our main concern right now. Staying alive has become a mission in and of itself in this war we are living under.”
Hadeya’s life has been thrown upside down since Israel’s attacks on Gaza began on July 7:
“The whole family is so scared of them targeting us, we’ve been called twice by the Israelis to evacuate. It’s very crowded here. We are five families, 48 people, staying in this one place. There is no privacy, no rest, no quiet time and above all everybody is so scared that something will happen. Yesterday morning we smelled gas and everybody panicked, so I panicked even though I am a strong woman. When you see someone who’s afraid of something, you automatically get affected and panic too.”
As with any mother, Hadeya’s main concerns during this period of uncertainty revolve around her children – a seven-year-old boy, five-year-old girl and eight-month-old baby girl:
“I worry about my little angels. On Saturday, the Israelis bombed the house next door at 2:30am. We woke up as if in a sea of heavy, dark smoke. Most of us couldn’t breathe or see anything. We were running like crazy and my daughter fell over her brother on the stairs. She had to get two stitches. I feel like a spoiled baby for being sorry and crying over her stitches when compared to kids who are even younger and lost legs or arms or are deaf now.”
“I kiss them all the time,” Hadeya says of her children. “I am mad at the whole situation but I can’t express my anger or show my weakness. I worry that I’m wasting the time I have with my kids – which might be our last days or hours, who knows – by getting mad at them for trivial reasons.”
Surrounded by devastation, Hadeya has a very somber perspective. “I think that this war is going to last maybe a week or ten days more,” she explains. “But will I be alive when it’s over? That’s a hard question to answer. I am not afraid of death. This is my destiny and I totally accept it. I am just one example of the thousands of young women like me here in Gaza.”