Gaza, where Asmaa had nurtured her dreams, had been devastated. But it wasn’t the physical changes that were absorbing her the most.
Society, she said, had been utterly transformed. The constant shocks of death, displacement and trauma leaving whole neighbourhoods teetering on the brink of disintegration.
Tight-knit communities had been blown apart, she said, with family members and neighbours scattered up and down the length of the Gaza Strip, and beyond.
Sometimes, in the struggle for survival, Gazans had turned on themselves. A total breakdown in law and order leaving gangs and rival families to battle it out for control of precious resources.
“It’s becoming really normal to see people even killing each other,” Asmaa said.
But if war had brought out the worst in people, it had also brought out the best.
In Jabalia, Asmaa said, people were sharing food and water, exchanging the latest news and information on where to charge mobile phones. With basic foodstuffs once again in short supply, women were swapping improvised recipes.
“Everyone is really taking care of each other.”
Asmaa said it would take decades for Gazans to recover the meagre, confined, life they knew before 7 October. Defiant talk of reconstruction and renewal, she said, felt delusional.
As for herself, Asmaa’s only dream now was to escape.
“I don’t have any hope in this place,” she told me. “I’m not the same person any more. I don’t think I’ll recover.”
