Eid al-Fitr is supposed to be a time filled with joy and celebration. Children should be running around in new clothes, laughing, collecting Eidiya (Eid money the grown-ups distribute) and visiting relatives.
Homes should be filled with the aroma of maamoul and kaak, the traditional Eid cookies, and streets should be alive with gatherings and celebration.
But in Gaza, this is a time of grief. The air is thick with dust from the rubble of destroyed buildings, and the sound of bombardments doesn’t abate.
Instead of joyful reunions, families sit among the ruins, mourning their loved ones.
Many of us are starving, barely holding onto life, wondering if the next bomb will fall on us. Nights are sleepless, haunted by memories and nightmares that do not fade away.
This will be my first Eid without my little sister, Rahaf. She was my only sister, my best friend. During the genocide, we clung to each other, finding comfort in each other.
We spent 13 Eids together on this Earth, and Rahaf was the joy of every one of them. Ever since she could walk, she would wake up before everyone else, running through the house, announcing it had begun.
She would put on her new clothes and ask me to do her hair before we visited our grandmothers in their homes, sitting with the extended family gathered there, drinking tea and eating the sweets the mothers had spent days preparing.
This year, there is nothing to prepare, no place to go, no Rahaf to share it with.
I never thought I would lose her, and I was not prepared for her absence. We dreamed of a future when we would always be by each other’s side to celebrate milestones, creating lives filled with art and words.
I longed to see her become the artist she always dreamed of being, to watch her paintings come to life and witness the world recognise her talent.
We imagined the day I would publish my first book. How we would celebrate together, knowing that no matter where life took us, we would always be each other’s biggest supporters.
Rahaf was taken away from me on December 28.
We were sleeping at home when, at 4am, my uncle’s home right next door was bombed. The explosion destroyed our home too.
Rahaf was asleep in the room closest to my uncle’s house and was crushed.
That was the room I used to sleep in. We had switched places only four days before she was killed.
Ever since then, there has been no time to grieve, no space to process loss. Grief does not ease amid bombs.
How can you heal when every moment threatens to take yet another loved one? How can you find a path forward when the future you envisioned has been stolen?
In the midst of my own grief, I have been reminded that there are those who understand her killing even less than I do.
As we adults carry unbearable anguish, children are left to navigate their own pain alone. They, too, have dreams interrupted by loss, by fear, by the absence of those who once made their world feel safe. My seven-year-old cousin Qamar recently called my attention to that.
One afternoon as I sat on a couch in the home of another uncle who had taken us in when our house was destroyed, Qamar came and sat beside me.
Her little hand reached up, gently touching my arm. I could tell she had been thinking.
“Shahd,” she began, her voice heavy with curiosity, “why aren’t you at your home? Why isn’t it there anymore?”
My heart skipped a beat at the simplicity of her question, yet I felt like it carried the weight of a thousand memories I didn’t know how to explain to those innocent eyes.
“Our home – it was destroyed. There was nothing left after the bombing. We lost everything – the walls, the memories and Rahaf.”
She stared at me for a moment, her eyes wide: “And Rahaf, where is she?”
I knew that Qamar had been told Rahaf was gone, so her question hit me like a cold gust of wind.
The weight of losing Rahaf felt impossible to put into words again for someone so young, especially someone like Qamar, who had known Rahaf’s warm laughter and gentle spirit.
I closed my eyes for a moment. My voice was barely a whisper. “Rahaf is in heaven now. She was taken from us during the bombing, and we can’t bring her back.”
Her face was filled with confusion and innocence. “Why did she have to go? Why did they take her?”
My hands shook as I pulled her close. “I don’t know, Qamar. I wish I could explain it to you in a way that makes sense.”
She whispered, “I want to see her again. I miss her.”
Tears welled up in my eyes, my heart aching. “I miss her too. Every single day. But she will always be with us, in our hearts.”
In that moment, I couldn’t help but wonder about the day when Qamar would understand what war does – not just to the land, but to people. How long before she realises that even when we try to move on, the pain of loss lingers like a shadow.
I don’t want her to understand these things. She’s too young for the weight of this harsh reality. She shouldn’t have to feel this kind of pain and loss.
I wish I could take the children of Gaza and hide them in my heart to protect them from terror, fear and grief.
The world expects us to be strong, to have sumoud (perseverance), but the emotional exhaustion of living through war and loss leaves little room for anything else.
The weight of survival without the luxury of healing is a burden. There is no closure in a genocide that continues to unfold.
There’s no space to grieve when survival demands every ounce of strength.
But we hold onto the love of those we have lost, keeping them alive in our memories, our words and our fight to exist.
Hope, however fragile, is an act of resistance.
It keeps us searching for light in the ruins, for meaning in absence, for life beyond mere survival.
It reminds us that we are still here. And that matters.