🔗 Share this article

'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

A young student, twelve, a temporary shelter

For the past two years since I stepped into a proper school. Two years since I listened to the start-of-class signal at my former school, took my seat and raised my hand during my beloved lesson. Occasionally I still distinctly recollect the familiar scents and noises: writing residue, sharpener leftovers, laughter echoing down the halls. But my educational institution is gone; it was targeted not long after the conflict started. My learning materials incinerated, and some of my friends killed.

I was in the fifth year on the seventh of October: the last day I went to school. That beginning of the day, alert signals blared through the corridors. Some students wept, others held hands tightly. Our educator attempted reassurance, but even her voice trembled. I remember hoping for a routine day; instruction, recess, a poem recital. Instead, that day marked the end of my former reality.

The war has taken so much. But the most painful deprivation of all is learning, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

Now I reside with my parents, two brothers and sister in a crowded shelter in al-Mawasi. The shelter coverings flap in the wind, failing to insulate. We queue for sustenance and drinks. Power is imaginary and personal space is absent. Aspiration appears brittle.

At evening, I look up at the celestial bodies through the gaps of my temporary home and wonder if my peers see the same sky. Some contact me when they are able, saying they long for education and have preserved their former exercise books; like treasures from a lost world. I feel guilty because I’ve misplaced all of mine.

I once envisioned pursuing pedagogy to support local youth acquire knowledge, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I dream of being a writer – to write, to speak and to show the world what it signifies to be a young person in this region. I want to share our experiences of anxiety and deprivation, but also fortitude. Because even in this place, amid death and ruins, our expressions persist.

When there’s some internet, I endeavor to educate myself online. Other times, I attend a small tent where helpers educate us mathematics and language. The lessons are short – the power fails or the airstrikes begin again but in these instances, I feel alive. I recall who I was: the student who cherished arithmetic and verse, who was convinced education could transform society.

Conflict has claimed innumerable things; our dwellings, schools and families. I grieved for my family member, his spouse, and their offspring. I said goodbye to my cherished hometown, that southern city, which is nothing but rubble now. But the most painful deprivation of all is learning, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

To the world, I state this: preserve our aspirations. We seek no sympathy, we require steps. Gaza’s children deserve literature, learning environments and security. Schooling is not a luxury, it is a basic right. This region is not just ruins; it is youth who persist in hoping beneath the drones at evening. It is my story and I will keep drafting, even if the sole items remaining is a broken pencil and a fragment of ripped sheet.

'They message: "are you OK, teacher?"'.

Naglaa Weshah, forty, instructor in al-Bureij camp

I have been instructing in Gaza for more than a decade. First in a southern city, then in a different town, and now in the central camp in the heart of the region. In pre-conflict times, I typically educated six classes of about fourty pupils per class, hundreds of eager students enthusiastic about knowledge.

Teaching them was my purpose and joy in reality, and I still recall the twinkle in a student’s eyes when a concept was understood; the type of instance every educator lives for.

I always believed education should be dynamic. My classroom was a area of recreation, aesthetics, and motion. We created cartographic art, dramatized bygone episodes, and turned lessons into stories.

Laughter always occupied the area as curiosity replaced apprehension. Certainly, even before the war, local youth were always frightened. My learning environment was a secure location but after 7 October, all was altered.

My school became a refuge for households fleeing the aerial attacks. Not long later, it was struck and entirely ruined. There are almost no schools still erect in the region now. For 24 months, all has been unusual. The hostilities has destroyed every aspect of our reality: security, residences, learning places, aspirations. Fear and grief are ever-present realities.

A significant number of my pupils are now lost – youth who mentioned becoming medical professionals, creatives, and educators. They were deprived even the privilege of living. Those who survive endure hunger, eviction and weariness – and however, they still hold onto the desire for education.

At times, when the online access allows, I receive messages from a small number of them. They message asking: “Are you OK, educator?” We share brief words, abbreviated teaching, minor flashes of interaction amid the chaos. They inquire if things will ever revert to standard. I state to them I have no answer.

Throughout the region, instructors, aid workers and charities attempt instruction in any feasible location: in shelters, damaged classrooms, or packed refuges. Education has become an act of defiance, a way to express: “Our presence continues.” And so long as we continue learning, we will endure.

Many of us are also guardians. I am a mother of {three|several