Shaimaa al-Durra
Middle East Eye / April 4, 2025
We had prepared a beautiful room for him, a warm bed, a home filled with safety and calm. Instead, he was born into a life of exile
This story did not start today. It began a year ago – on 19 March 2024, to be exact. It has been a year of war, fear, hunger, loss, displacement and destruction in Gaza – a year of death lurking around every corner.
I saw death with my own eyes. I only realised I was still alive when my water broke in a moment of sheer terror.
A missile had struck right beside our home. The blast was so powerful it blew the door open, and shrapnel came flying in as the acrid smell of smoke filled the air, mingling with the metallic scent of blood.
I was certain it was over. But I was not afraid for myself; I was afraid for my baby, who had not even seen the sun yet.
Would we be torn apart, my unborn child, my husband and I? I lost control, screaming: “We’re burning. We’re burning.”
I had dreamed of welcoming my child with joy, warmth and celebration. Instead, he arrived to the sound of bullets and a sky on fire.
As my due date neared, I had prayed for his birth to be peaceful, clinging desperately to the hope of a ceasefire. But fate was cruel. My son became one of the many children of war – children whose first cries were drowned out by explosions, whose homes and cradles were turned to rubble and whose lives were stolen before they even began.
We were alone – alone in a world on fire.
Praying for mercy
As Israel’s war on the Palestinian enclave raged on, I had no shelter, no comfort, no helping hands. My only strength came from my son’s tiny kicks. Every movement inside me was a whisper, a promise: we will survive this.
Death had knocked on our door, but somehow, we made it through. We survived evacuations, walking through empty streets where even the wind carried sorrow. We survived separation as the war’s brutal hands tore me away from my family. We survived loss and the grief that became a constant weight on my chest.
When the enemy bombed our home while I was seven months pregnant, I whispered to myself the exact words God whispered to Maryam: “So eat and drink and cool thine eye.” It gave me a fleeting moment of peace amid the chaos. I clung to the belief that my child was my gift, my reason to keep going.
Then, the labour came.
With every wave of pain, I prayed for mercy and strength. This was supposed to be a moment of warmth, love, and hands holding mine in comfort. Instead, I was surrounded by darkness – by a road paved with death – amid the fear that this night could be my last.
The sound of bombs was a haunting backdrop to each contraction. I begged God to let me bring my son into this world safely and to let me live long enough to hold him.
We ran from one place to another, always chased by death. As the war dragged on, he was too young to know summer from winter, but he knew suffering
Amid the destruction, my son’s first cry was a testament to our unyielding spirit.
It was a freezing, rainy night, but the sky burned. Warplanes roared overhead and missiles lit up the darkness, turning my city into something out of a nightmare.
Women gave birth in the ruins, surrounded by the dead, by mothers cradling their lifeless children. I had not kissed my baby’s face yet. Morning came, and finally, my family arrived. For the first time in so long, I felt that God had heard my prayers.
But peace was a dream we no longer knew. The sound of bombs was louder than my joy. Still, I made a decision that day: my son and I would survive. We would fight through whatever came next.
And the struggle was only beginning. How would I feed him? The markets, once empty, were suddenly full again, but everything was being sold at impossible prices. Meat, fish and fruit were luxuries we could no longer afford. And clothes? He had none, wearing only the hand-me-downs of children who, like him, were born into war.
Endless torment
My son was born a refugee, a child without a home – just like us. We ran from one place to another, always chased by death. As the war dragged on, he was too young to know summer from winter, but he knew suffering.
The heat was unbearable. He sweated constantly, crying until exhaustion claimed him.
Sunset was another kind of torment. The last rays of the sun turned our shelter into an oven, and his tiny cries echoed through the night. Insects feasted on his delicate skin. Stray dogs – once pets, now scavengers of war – howled in the distance. Some had even fed on the bodies of our people in the north.
The air strikes were relentless; he had known their terror since his first week of life.
And then the cold came. He cried, and I cried with him. Depression weighed heavily on me. Darkness closed in, but my faith was my anchor.
We had so little, even sharing clothes to keep warm. I remember the first week of our displacement, packing a few belongings, thinking we would be back soon. I did not know our lives had changed forever.
We lived like ghosts in a cold grave, fearing the frost would claim my son as it had other children in the camps. Every night, I kissed him as if it were the last time, fearing for his life more than my own. His birth should have been a joy, but it became a burden weighing down my heart.
When he turned one, I wished I could give him peace. But how could I offer that in a time of war?
We had prepared a beautiful room for him, a warm bed, a home filled with safety and calm. But he came into a world of exile, with no home, no bed, where war was all he knew.
To my little one, my child of love and war: I pray your coming years are filled with peace, mercy and safety. To my miracle amid despair, my hope in days uncertain: may you remain my strength, my little angel.
Shaimaa al-Durra is a journalist from Gaza; a mother to a young boy born during Israel’s war on the enclave, she has written widely on local and regional issues, including the plight of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails
