Every morning, I look at myself and my neighbours standing in the queue for water, and remember how each of us once had a life of our own, our privacy, our own toothbrush, our own home and our own bathroom. How we used to wash our faces and drink clean water without ever imagining that a day would come when these simple routines would become a battle with ourselves and with every drop of water. Even standing beneath a hot shower has become a dream postponed until further notice.

A year has passed since the announcement of the “ceasefire” in Gaza, yet the spectre of war, bombardment and death has never left our lives.

War is not simply the bombing of buildings or the evacuation of a residential neighbourhood. There are small wars inside this one enormous war. The tent is a war. The surveillance drone – the zannana, as we call it, for its incessant buzzing – is a war. Queueing for water is a war. Waiting to use the toilet is a war. The death of privacy is a war. Thirty people crammed into a single room is a war.

Every morning, the same question follows me: what will happen today? Will my children return from what remains of their school to what remains of our home, having walked along what remains of a street, when bombardment could take them from me at any moment?

They walk long distances because transport is difficult and expensive amid fuel shortages, repeated border crossing closures and the trickle of essential supplies into Gaza. It is as though life itself is being rationed to us, drop by drop.

In Gaza, waking up alive is........

© The Guardian