Doaa: From a Dreamworld to the Ashes of Displacement

The writer developed her creativity at the now destroyed Islamic University and in We Are Not Numbers (WANN), a youth-led Palestinian initiative that until today provides training in English to developing storyteller–journalists, allowing them a better chance of reaching the world beyond Gaza’s closed borders.

Taqwa Ahmed Al-Wawi

 

In a quiet corner of our home, my sister Doaa had built a world of her own — a world full of details I hadn’t really noticed at the time, but which I now recall with painful longing. Doaa was born on October 4, 2002. She is the kind of person who sees beauty where others see the mundane. She studied multimedia at the Islamic University of Gaza and has always been deeply passionate about creativity, order, and all the little things. This is apparent in every space she’s ever called her own.

Her room wasn’t just a room; it was a universe tailored by her hands. A wardrobe bursting with outfits, scarves in countless shades, shoes matched perfectly to every dress. Her notebooks were decorated with love on the outside and written with care inside. Her shelves held boxes from Shein, bottles of perfume, and a growing collection of beloved trinkets. But it was her desk that most reflected her essence — a little sanctuary where she found her inspiration.

A black-and-white patterned cloth covered her desk, soft to the touch. To the left sat her laptop, playfully adorned with stickers. Notebooks, elegant mugs, and soft lighting surrounded her, with artificial plant leaves hanging gently against her pink wall. It was a space that seemed to wait quietly for her next idea, her next midnight sentence, her next spark of design.

Doaa is not just a survivor. She is a mirror reflecting every young woman in Gaza who once dreamed of a simple life and now fights daily to preserve her sanity. I haven’t seen her since the war resumed in March of this year. She’s stuck in a part of Khan Younis we can’t reach. The internet is weak, and updates are rare.

Ten days before the war began, Doaa got married. Her joy was still fresh. Her dress still hung in our minds. She had just moved into a warm, welcoming apartment on the sixth floor of her in-laws’ building in Khan Younis, in the Al-Amal neighborhood, on October 26, 2023.

What I loved most was her new office corner — her books, her things, all arranged with her usual loving attention. I remember how exhausting it had been for her to pack everything up. She had so many belongings that we had to use massive suitcases, most of which she didn’t even get the chance to unpack. The gifts, the accessories, the tokens of joy — still wrapped, still untouched.

Because then the war came.

When the Israeli forces invaded Khan Younis for the first time on December 5, 2023, Doaa had already been displaced to a school shelter along with her husband’s entire family. This was how she began her married life. One day she was decorating her new room, and the next she was sleeping in a computer lab at a school.

The first night in the shelter was the hardest, she told me. The walls were cold, and the space smelled like fear. Children cried in corners, and elderly people coughed under thin blankets. Doaa sat silently, hugging her knees, her wedding ring glinting under the flickering light. It no longer felt like a symbol of joy, but a reminder of all that was lost.

And then, the worst news came: their entire building had been flattened — six floors, each a family’s entire life, reduced to dust.

We were grateful they were alive, but for Doaa, it was as if her soul had been buried beneath that rubble. I remember when she called my mom to break the news. She couldn’t speak — she only cried. “She’s crying over her clothes,” her husband told us. “Her books. Her perfumes. Her memories.”

All her possessions had been destroyed — her clothes, perfumes, makeup, notebooks, decorated mugs, accessories, shoes, books, scented candles, carefully chosen curtains, matching towels and plates, her wedding gifts, her Shein boxes, and even the unopened suitcases packed with dreams of a different kind of future. Every single item she had so carefully chosen, every blouse, every abaya, every scarf in all her favorite shades — vanished beneath the rubble. Things she never got to use, never got to enjoy, never even got to touch after the wedding… all ground into dust.

Her 4,000 dinar dowry — gone.

Her dreams — crushed into powder.

“I didn’t even get to wear my dresses, my abayas, my blouses,” she sobbed. “I didn’t get to enjoy my things.” She kept saying, “I wish I had left something behind at home… anything.” She meant our home, not her house with her husband. 

And things continued to get more difficult. One displacement after another. From one tent to the next. “There’s not a single tent I haven’t tried,” she said once. It became her bitter joke. She managed a little laugh here and there, but mostly she stayed silent. She’d cry when old photos appeared on her phone. She stared at the image of her desk in her mind’s eye, as if she could rebuild it there, if she only concentrated hard enough.

In one of the many tents, the roof leaked every night. Rain mixed with ash fell over their heads as they tried to sleep. The muddy rain stained all the few clothes and belongings left to her. 

Doaa has no desk to arrange anymore. But every effort she makes to keep going, each attempt at normalcy is a new version of that beloved desk — organized despite the chaos, warm despite the cold, hopeful despite the ruin. A space she has carved out for herself in this world.

And then, on October 28, 2024, came Hossam. Under the roar of warplanes, in a place no child should ever know, her first baby arrived. She was terrified. But somehow, she found the strength to bear him into this life. She became a mother amid destruction.

Gaza’s hunger crisis already had everyone tight in its grip. Prices soared beyond reason. Even basic baby supplies became luxury items. “Even the simplest thing is a battle,” she told us. Diapers were expensive and rare. Eggs, once an ordinary meal, disappeared from shelves. She didn’t have much to give her son — except for all her love.

Still, Doaa didn’t give up.

Despite the exhaustion, the hunger, the grief — she continued her studies remotely. She had only a few hours of courses left as well as her final graduation project left to complete. Her laptop, a sole surviving companion, became her window to the world. She would sit inside the tent, completing assignments, taking exams, refusing to let war steal any more from her.

She struggled just to find electricity to charge her laptop and phone so she could continue her studies. The internet connection was far from ideal. It became one of her many daily battles. Sometimes, she’d walk long distances to find a café with wi-fi, just to submit an assignment or attend an online exam. She often typed her exam answers with one hand while cradling Hossam in the other. At night, after lulling him to sleep, she’d remain up for hours, eyes heavy with exhaustion, finishing what remained of her studies.

The Islamic University of Gaza was her last lifeline, but that, too, was taken away. Israeli airstrikes hit the campus in October 2023. The graduation hall was turned to rubble. 

Doaa had dreamed of walking across the grounds there one day in her graduation gown. Another dream collapsed into the concrete and glass.

She’d barely had time to enjoy her wedding. Now, she wouldn’t get to have her graduation either.

The war didn’t just steal her belongings — it carved a hole where her future should have been.

And yet still, on April 20, 2025, my sister Doaa officially graduated after completing all the required procedures.

And then, exactly one month later, on May 20, 2025, the same day Doaa messaged us saying she planned to visit because she missed us, Israeli forces issued new evacuation orders for multiple Khan Younis neighborhoods. Among them was the area where she was staying. People were told to flee to Al-Mawasi — labeled a “safe zone,” but one lacking clean water, infrastructure, and medical care. Bombings intensified across Khan Younis, striking displacement camps and killing civilians, including children. These repeated forced evacuations exposed the brutal truth: in Gaza, no place is truly safe.

Doaa is not just a survivor. She is a mirror reflecting every young woman in Gaza who once dreamed of a simple life and now fights daily to preserve her sanity. I haven’t seen her since the war resumed in March of this year. She’s stuck in a part of Khan Younis we can’t reach. The internet is weak, and updates are rare.

We miss her. We miss Hossam.

I miss the way she would barge into my room without knocking, borrowing things without asking. I miss Hossam’s little voice, his first laugh, his cry. I miss having to put him to sleep, whispering to him: “Sleep little one, sleep in peace. Sweet dreams and calm skies.”

Despite all she has lost, Doaa still believes that the rubble is not the end of the story, but rather its new beginning. Every tent she’s stayed in, every cold night spent with her child in her arms she sees as an unforgettable lesson in patience. She’s not waiting for a miracle. Instead she keeps taking small but sure steps toward tomorrow, holding onto the belief that one day she will reach the end of this hard road, one day she will build a new home — a home where Hossam will have free reign to run through the dry, safe corridors, where graduation photos will hang, and where Doaa will return to being herself: the creator of beautiful corners, defiant in the face of war.

 

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Timeline:

• Doaa was born on the 4th of October, 2002.
• The conference hall where the Islamic University graduation ceremony was supposed to be held was bombed on the 9th of October, 2023.
• Doaa got married on the 26th of October, 2023.
• The invasion of Khan Younis and her first displacement happened on the 5th of December, 2023.
• On the 28th of October, 2024, Doaa gave birth to her son, Hossam.
• Her house was bombed on the 14th of January, 2024.
• The war resumed on the 3rd of March, 2025.
• Doaa graduated online on the 20th of April, 2025.
• The evacuation of Khan Younis + her message said she was planning to visit us on the 20th of May, 2025.