This post is also available in: Français (French) العربية (Arabic)
Abla al-Alami
In war, there’s no time for the little details. No time to catch my breath, organize my thoughts, or even grab a bag. I was in our home in southern Gaza when the missile hit. I couldn’t think of anything—there was only dust, screaming, the sound of things breaking, things that once represented life for us. I emerged from under the rubble. But though I may have gotten out, a part of me has remained trapped there, stuck among the shattered tiles and the memories of our past.
A woman in a warzone
Ever since that night, I have had to constantly move. I’ve been displaced 11 times. Each time is more brutal than the last. Every single time, we’ve had to leave behind a part of our lives, a part of our belongings, a part of our dreams.
Today, I live in a small tent inside a displacement camp. A tent that barely has enough space for me to breathe in. There is no privacy, no electricity, no door to shut behind me for some semblance of safety. But despite everything, there’s one thing I can’t give up: writing.
Abla’s house, before and after it was bombed by IsraelWhen all other sources of light have run out, I write by the light of my phone. I write, because writing is the only thing that hasn’t shattered yet. It’s the only outlet for my pain and grief.
Wars were not created for women, yet we find ourselves at the heart of them. And we find ourselves fighting on multiple fronts: we fight for survival, to protect our children, and sometimes we wield our pens in the face of violence. We carry our children, our pain, and our words, and with them we walk through the rubble.
Sometimes I walk for hours to reach a site where a family was bombed. Or to record the testimony of a woman who lost her home, husband, and son all at once. I return heavy with grief, but I write. I write because I know that no one will tell our story as women if we don’t tell it ourselves.
Every time I leave the tent and go “on the ground,” I know I’m taking a risk. Not only because I’m a journalist, but because I’m a woman in a place where women aren't seen as truth-tellers, only as victims. But I’m not a victim. I’m a witness, and my words are resistance.
This writing that I do is not just words on paper. It’s my way of resisting, my way of influencing my surroundings. It’s the hope I cling to as everything around me collapses.
When you’re a woman in the midst of war, you’re not just a victim. You’re a mother, a sister, a journalist, a survivor. And yet your voice is rarely heard, your presence rarely recounted. So when I write, I do it for them, for the women, so that their stories may live on in history.
Writing as an act of survival
Every day, I ask myself: what does it mean to write in the middle of all this devastation?
What is the significance of journalism when everything is collapsing? What makes us cling to the pen when around us there is all this suffering?
I go back to writing because I have no other choice. I write against forgetting—to say that we were here, we lived, we died, we wrote amid the rubble. Writing is the only path that doesn’t lead us to death, but rather gives us a chance to survive.
We may have lost our homes, and we may not be returning soon, but we have pens and hearts that have not yet surrendered. This writing, however fragile and tiring it may be, is the hope that dwells within me. It’s the only means by which I can maintain my humanity.
In the embrace of the tent, what we sense and don’t write about
I write a lot, but there are things that go unwritten. Things that are only felt:
The sound of a baby crying in the neighboring tent because she wants her bed.
The smell of bread baking on a metal griddle over a fire.
A mother’s laughter, despite everything, because she managed to prepare a small plate of lentils.
These little moments, which to some may seem trivial, are what make life in the midst of war. They remind you that life goes on, despite everything.
At night, we women sit huddled together in the tent, exchanging stories, hiding our fear behind jokes, sharing phone chargers and cups of tea. In this small space, these women’s faces have become part of my story, my writing, and my heart.
Every one of them is a journalist in her own way: documenting, narrating, crying, remaining silent. Never giving up. It’s like we’re all writing one story: a story of resilience in the face of death, of survival against all odds.
The tent in which Abla lives
The voices of women in war
I write about them, about their bread soaked in hope, about their patience, about the roads they walked on in search of refuge. I write about their faces that no one has seen, about their experiences, which they only divulge in secret.
When you’re a woman in the midst of war, you’re not just a victim. You’re a mother, a sister, a journalist, a survivor. And yet your voice is rarely heard, your presence rarely recounted. So when I write, I do it for them, for the women, so that their stories may live on in history.
I write because I know these words may be the last thing the world remembers about us. I write because I refuse to let our suffering be forgotten, our history be erased. And I refuse for people’s only memory of us to be confined to our suffering.
In war, there’s no room for excessive grief or surrender. And if you’re unable to cry, you write. In the midst of all the pain and fear, writing is our only escape from our reality, our only window to the light.
Maybe one day, when this war is over, I will return to what I wrote by the light of my phone in a tent lacking everything but my sheer will. And maybe on that day, I’ll know that I resisted, that I did everything I could to survive, that I preserved those moments that are still vivid in my memory—I’ll know that I told the story of Gaza, of its women, of its journalists who kept writing even when everything else faded away.
