Note from our Editor-in-Chief: This week marks three years since the horrific October 7 attack on Israel and the Israeli genocide in Gaza that followed. We’re offering a full week of coverage, including reported pieces, essays and interviews. If you’re not already a paid subscriber, become one today to get full access to all of Zeteo UK’s October 7 coverage and more. – Mehdi
The first thing genocide took from me was the future tense.
For the first 21 years of my life, I used it carelessly; everything could happen tomorrow: I will finish university, I will make a name for myself, I will travel, I will get married, I will see you on Thursday, I will do it tomorrow.
Tomorrow was such an ordinary promise that I never thought of it as one.
On October 6, 2023, I went to sleep in my bedroom in Gaza City. A room too foolishly pink, with cushions and stuffed animals covering the bed and dresses of every colour and stitch. Gifts and photographs hung on the walls and mirror, keeping the memory of the moments they carried.
My family was at home, a detail that means more to me in my exile now than anything in the world. Nobody was missing; nobody was trapped somewhere I couldn’t reach. I did not yet know the particular terror of calling someone again and again and feeling my stomach drop with every unanswered ring.
That night, my mother was still just my mother. She hadn’t learned yet how to ration water between her children. My brothers were just boys, not yet rehearsing bravery for our sake. And our house was a house with the lights on all night.
If I had known that I was spending one of my last ordinary nights in my own home, I would have paid more attention. I would have memorised the weight of my pink blanket. I would have listened more carefully to my family talking to each other from different rooms. I would have noticed the sound a house makes when everybody you love is inside it.
Instead, I went to sleep. The next morning, my brother woke me: “Wake up. It’s war.”