Aug 12, 2025
Ghada’s home town now. Image: Mohammed Ibrahim on Unsplash
What’s it like to live under daily bombing, without food? Read this and find out.
I have a Facebook friend in Gaza named Ghada. She is a 30-something mother of three. They are struggling to survive, cut off from her family as they try to dodge Israeli bombing and find food. She doesn’t seem to have many friends.
She calls me her most trusted friend, though we have never met. I send her a little money from time to time, though it’s not nearly enough when a pound of flour goes for $100 or more.
I had known her for a few years when I discovered she is a poet. One day, she messaged me this:
My message to you
There are moments
They don’t need a lot of words from us
The serenity of the soul and the whisper of the heart are enough
It is enough for you to be pure and clean
For your fragrance to reach without you saying anything
The messages of the soul arrive without
A postman, without effort
The letters that come from the heart
And the heart reads and feels them.
Good evening to the kind and beautiful hearts
Reading that message still makes me cry. She has sent other poems like that, but lately her poetry has been about living with starvation:
I have no energy… but we struggle, completing the journey with heavy
steps, and hearts that conceal what remains unsaid
We resist collapse in silence, holding our scattered limbs so that we do not collapse in front of anyone
We get tired, we weaken, we suppress, but we continue
As if there is a soldier inside us who does not know how to surrender
As if we were created to carry more than we can bear, and
to remain silent when the screaming rises inside us
We struggle not because we are fine, but because we are accustomed to
continuing even if we are broken, to smiling in pain, and to saying,
“We are fine.”
Press enter or click to view image in full size
We Are Not Numbers, AIgeneraated image of child in Gaza.
This poem strikes me as embodying a lot of what Palestine is going through and why they may ultimately win. We must help them.
Ghada doesn’t usually write in poetry. Most days she just messages “Hello. How are you?” Or she sends a letter like this:
“Did you know that when I write to you I feel psychological comfort? I hope to see you one day to thank you in person. I used to dream of receiving better things for us, but now we dream of very simple things, just feeding my children. I am writing to you while crying. Humanity has been lost.”
I hope to see her one day in San Francisco, to hug her children. Doesn’t seem likely, but what a thrill that would be.
She also sends news, like this story confirming that the “humanitarian aid distribution centers” are death traps:
“Brother, I went to get humanitarian aid, but I couldn’t. They opened fire randomly. Why all this?” She tried another time and reported, “I went to aid distribution so I could feed my kids but I will never go again. I asked for water from an American employee he said no water then he randomly fired pepper spray. Why?”
Lately, more of her messages ask for money, like this
“My dear brother, my children and I are suffering a lot. I hope you can
help me buy food and flour to make bread. Here, the humanitarian situation is very difficult. I don’t know why they are doing this to us. We want peace and security and to live like other countries. My dear brother, I hope you can help me with $450. I hope you can help me and my children. We love you very much.”
But I don’t have nearly that much to send, and they would need more next week. I don’t know what to so.
Ghada sums up what they are going through like this: “I really hope that this suffering that my children and I are living will end. I am very tired. The bombing is continuing now. The situation is getting more difficult every day. What is this evil?”
Most of us know the evil is the empire centered in America and spearheaded by Israel. I ask everyone to do all they can for Palestine. There’s no easy way to send Ghada money, though she does have an account at the Bank of Palestine which accepts wire transfers. If you message her on Facebook, she could send you the numbers you would need to do a transfer. Or leave a reply here and I’ll send her your contact info.
But there are many agencies helping Gaza. Contribute to one; speak out, join an organization, fight back! Given American rulers’ tight connection to Israel, their fight is our fight.
Follow Ghada on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ghada.alnjar.2025
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