Before Oct. 7, I used to see the streets of Gaza as very beautiful, with its many new projects and buildings, its luxurious restaurants and thriving businesses. It used to make me smile; when the taxi driver took me around in those streets, I was proud that there was life in Gaza, despite the many wars it has experienced.

But I also had a great fear that another war would come and destroy all of this. We live in a constant state of fear. This isn’t the first war where we’ve been displaced. And I, too, got used to it, though I didn’t like it. I was one of the stubborn ones. Previously, I had always told my family that I did not want us to leave our home when there is a war in Gaza. I do not like being displaced and its difficult circumstances. I want to die at home—but the wish remains only words. A person continues to fight for survival. During this war, I’ve relented. We’ve tried displacement several times, all in order to escape death.

I am 30 years old, and I have a small family, two sisters and one brother. One of my sisters is married and has two children. My sister lives west of the city of Khan Yunis, while I live in the east of it, in the area next to the European Hospital. At the beginning of the war, we began to suffer from a lack of water. I started carrying large gallons to the second floor to fill the water tanks on the roof of the house, using a rope pulled by my brother or father. I wash our clothes by hand up there, because there is no electricity to operate the washing machines. There is also no gas for cooking; so many are forced to light a fire in order to cook food, the food that we have all craved, because it has been banned from entering the Gaza Strip. I do not like the canned food spread in the market and distributed as aid to the people of Gaza. My stomach does not accept it, and neither does my family. For a time, we were trying to cook some simple dishes from vegetables, and we relied more on cheese sandwiches.

It is a very different war. I live between the cities of Khan Yunis and Rafah. When the ground operation began in the city of Khan Yunis last December, my area was separated from the city. We could not go there the normal way, on the main road. But we were looking for other ways that we could go, to check on my sister, who was staying in the city’s refugee camp. The communications outage was a major obstacle, and we had great fear and anxiety that we would lose someone, possibly even without knowing it, if we didn’t do something. So we decided: We would venture to Khan Yunis, even if it wasn’t allowed. We would make sure my sister was OK and come back.

On our way, we heard the sounds of intense bombardment in the city, heavy missiles and powerful explosions. Eventually the assault forced us to flee to the nearby European Hospital because the danger of being hit with shrapnel became too great. The bombs were powerful, and they reached our residential area. Fleeing, though, was not a good option either—it was dangerous. We could die trying to reach the hospital. But I felt forced to do so because my mother, who is in her 50s, has a spinal cord disease, and her movement is very weak. She was afraid that an explosion would come soon, hindering her ability to escape death. So I went with her to the hospital, and we took shelter for her safety.

When we arrived, we could not find a place to stay because of the large number of displaced people there, and we spent the night in the building’s garage. I felt humiliated at the time that I was near my house and could not sleep in it. I was looking at my mother, who was frozen from the cold, and praying that the time would pass. It was a........

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