Dear Whoever Might Read This
I don’t know who you are. I don’t know if you’ll ever see this. I don’t even know if there’s anyone left who remembers us here. Gaza is a place where time is broken, and words get swallowed by the smoke. But I’ve got this pen, this paper, and the stubborn hope that someone, somewhere, will see it.
It’s 3 a.m., and I’m listening to the sound of distant explosions, the rumble that feels like a gut punch you can’t escape. People outside are still sleeping—or pretending to sleep. Some things are better kept silent, like dreams, like the smell of blood, like the sound of a child crying after the ground has shaken their world apart.
I’m writing this because I don’t know what else to do. I can’t fix what’s broken here. No one can. I don’t even know if I can save myself anymore. But I keep writing because this is all that’s left—this ink and these words.
Yesterday, my little brother, Hassan asked me if the world was always this loud. I didn’t know how to answer him. I told him it wasn’t. I lied. He won’t know a world without the noise. He won’t know what it’s like to sit in a room and hear nothing but your own heartbeat, the simple, quiet sound of a life not under siege. The rockets, the screams, the constant, maddening roar of a city dying. That’s his world. That’s all he’s ever known.
I don’t want to write about politics. I don’t want to write about the walls closing in, the foreign faces in the sky, the powers that are too high and too far to see us. I’ve heard enough of that. The people with their big words, their long speeches—they don’t care about us. No, it’s not the words that hurt. It’s the silence that follows when nothing changes. You’re probably reading this from some clean, quiet place. The kind of place where people don’t hear the air vibrating from bombs. The kind of place where children laugh for real, not because they’ve learned to laugh as a way of surviving.
I want you to know that we still dream here. We dream in the dark because the light hurts. And we still love here. Against all the odds, against all the hate, we still know how to love. Sometimes it’s a look. Sometimes it’s a breath shared in the shadow of destruction. It’s a weird thing, this love, when the world’s hell-bent on teaching you that you don’t deserve it. But we hold on to it. We cling to it like it’s the last damn thing we’ve got.
But it’s hard. Oh, it’s so hard. You see, the world moves on, doesn’t it? You’re probably still sitting in your office, doing your thing, making your money, complaining about your job. But here, the day doesn’t feel like a day. It feels like a countdown. A ticking clock, each second pulling us closer to something we can’t control. Every moment is one closer to another raid, another tragedy, another life lost.
I’m not asking for your pity. That’s not what this is. I’m not some sad story that you can forget about when you switch off the news. I don’t want your charity. I want something real. I want you to look at us—look at me—and understand that we’re not just the backdrop to your headlines. We’re human. Just like you. We’ve got mouths that laugh, mouths that kiss, mouths that scream. We’ve got hearts that love and that ache and that refuse to stop.
So, if you read this—if this letter ever makes it out—don’t just think of us as victims. Think of us as survivors. We’re still here, and we’ll be here tomorrow. And the day after that. We’re the ones who live through the rubble. And maybe, just maybe, we’ll find a way to rise up from it.
But right now, I’m still writing. And tomorrow, I’ll write again.
Yours
Someone from Gaza
MAHOOR HAYA SHAH
hayashah546@gmail.com
Writer and Editor from Srinagar, Kashmir
