Lubna Ahmad Abu Sitta
The Electronic Intifada / May 5, 2026
Elegance in Gaza is a luxury, and, most of the time, it’s impossible to attain.
Today, I am setting out from Khan Younis in southern Gaza to meet my graduate adviser in Deir al-Balah, at Al-Aqsa University’s temporary headquarters, to submit my master’s thesis plan, and I want to look elegant.
I want to meet him as a university student, as I see this meeting as a step toward repairing what has been broken in my life: the daily routines, the disappeared infrastructure, the destroyed university life.
What someone outside of Gaza might take for granted – putting on a nice outfit and looking neat – is not taken for granted here.
We wash clothes by hand. We carry jugs of water for this task and save money for soap. Washing clothes by hand takes hours. Then, to iron, we must have a battery charged and ready.
Maintaining one’s physical appearance is an exhausting daily task, with many pre-planned steps.
But today I feel ready, and I start the day full of energy.
At our house in Khan Younis, where I am from and where I have lived for all my life, I put on my best clothing, a light beige coat and a checkered scarf, and I set off for Deir al-Balah.
Fear of no return
The moment I step onto al-Bahr street, I am hit by reality. The streets of Gaza are a shock to the senses.
The asphalt of the road is gone. The pavement of a sidewalk is not pavement, it is dirt and debris, a mix of shards of concrete, trash and other various bits of rubble. Mountains of rubble are on either side of the former street.
I play hopscotch among the debris, carefully picking where to place my feet to avoid sinking into puddles. It is a desperate struggle to keep my outfit clean, to maintain the idea of myself that I had built up while getting dressed.
Then, there is the fear. Since the beginning of the war, the mere thought of going out alone has terrified me: the prospect of being killed by an Israeli attack and nobody finding my body for days.
When I hear the drones, I imagine they are watching the person right next to me, waiting to strike. It is a recurring nightmare that if I go north, to Gaza City, Israel will again cut off the north from the south and I will be trapped there, away from my family.
I wait for a car to pick me up. I see what has now become a common sight: a trailer or aqalah hitched behind a car, transporting people who must grip the edges of the trailer to not fall out. I watch as their bodies jerk and jolt over the shock of the bumps in the road.
Every car that passes is a mechanical miracle – dilapidated, broken and running by sheer luck. Most of Gaza’s cars have been destroyed by Israeli attacks, and it’s more common to see cars burned up, discarded or stacked than running on the roads.
The smell in the air is cooking oil – which is mixed with gasoline to get a little more mileage in a car – and I choke a little as I breathe it in.
After a full hour of waiting amid the swirls of dust, I feel the elegance from before slip away.
Catching a ride
I finally manage to get into the back seat of a packed Skoda car that is also hauling a trailer with even more passengers.
Next to me is a woman in her sixties, whose 13-year-old granddaughter has moved onto her lap to make room for me. On the other side of her is a medical student whispering into her phone: “I will send the reports as soon as I reach the hospital; I am still on the road.”
Suddenly, the car stops, and a woman in her forties, her face drenched in sweat and anxiety, pleads: “Let me sit with you; my mother is waiting for me at the hospital.”
We somehow manage to squeeze her into the backseat, so now five of us are crammed in there. I look out the window behind her and see hundreds of people on the road waiting for a car, with looks of despair on their faces.
Every time the car stops, people peer inside, note that it’s full and then continue to wait for a ride.
The car struggles to get its start again, weighed down by the many passengers.
A ticking time bomb
We finally reach Al-Aqsa junction, the gathering point for cars traveling between Khan Younis and Deir al-Balah. In the past, a taxi could have taken you the full way, but now the ride is split up between multiple taxis or whatever kind of transport you can find.
At the junction, I see donkeys and horses pulling carts, and tents packed into any open space available. This area used to feel a little more rural, with views of green space and agricultural lands. But because Salah al-Din road is now in a “yellow” zone and is off-limits, transport hubs have moved elsewhere, to places like this, where thousands of people converge daily to try and get around Gaza.
I walk through the carts and the market stalls, and I find the woman whose mother is at the hospital in another car. I take the seat next to her, and she tells me that her mother has cancer and is undergoing chemotherapy. She says that in the past, hospitals would provide transport to family members to accompany the patients, but that has now stopped.
Our journey continues, and I take in what I see along the road.
I see a boy, barely 12, pulling a wooden cart with worn-out wheels through the sand. In the back of the cart is a black water tank, and he shouts at the top of his lungs: “Water! Who wants to buy water?”
I watch him and I want to scream. Why must this child live like this?
Moments later, I see another child, no older than 10, inside a dilapidated blue car moving at a slow speed. The vehicle has been stripped of its bumpers and glass windows; nylon and tape hold it together.
Then, I see a rusted, red, three-wheeled tuk-tuk swaying from side to side, with no roof. Children cling to its outer edges. I look at the small hands gripping the metal.
In another car, beside the driver on the passenger seat is a large gas cylinder, strapped in with an iron chain.
I think this is a ticking time bomb, and I turn away.
I pull my thesis work out of my bag and I try to read through it. My master’s degree is in geography, and my thesis is about map-making skills among Gaza’s youth.
I find it hard to focus, though, and I close my eyes for the rest of the journey.
My destination
I had left home at 8 am, and it is nearing noon when I arrive in Deir al-Balah.
I take my wet wipes out of my bag and clean my shoes and scarf and try to regain composure, but after a four-hour trip, it is difficult.
As I try to find my professor, I think of Dr. Wissam Issa, the head of the geography department at Al-Aqsa University. He was martyred in December 2023. I miss Dr. Wissam; he would have been the one to guide me through my thesis.
I also think of my friend Shahd, another geography master’s student in my class. She was martyred with her family a year and a half ago.
The meeting with my adviser is short, about an hour. We discuss the challenges ahead of us – studying geography and technology with limited resources and a lack of reliable access to the internet or even electricity.
Around 2 pm, I begin the journey back to Khan Younis to make sure I can get back before sunset.
Every step I take toward earning this degree, I now see as a tribute to those we have lost.
Lubna Ahmad Abu Sitta is a writer from Gaza
