21st of May 2025

My body is alive. It’s not received the notification that am dead. This is the first time in over a year I have been able to pick up a pen and write somewhat coherent sentences. I tend to only doodle ‘death to the invaders’, over and over and over again. It calms the monkey mind.
Back in February last year I went into a freeze state. We were sheltering in a crowded school. IDF soldiers entered and selected girls. They took me, my sister, my cousin. They stripped my mum of her clothes to shut her up when she protested and they kicked my father into the ground, he lost his front teeth. He doesn’t see to min much. ‘There is nothing to chew around here anyway.’

They dragged us outside and led us into a family home they had turned into their camp. My sister and I were told we were too ugly to have sex with the soldiers. Correction, they said: ‘To make love to us.’

Our cousin, yes, beauty is a curse, was forced to give a blowjob to a sergeant. He was the boss of the group, meaning he was always shouting the loudest.

You know how proud Zainab is. She bit down hard. Four soldiers had to kick her relentlessly before she let go. I saw blood around her mouth. Some of it was hers, but some of it was the soldier’s. I don’t think she actually bit it off, but he seemed pretty badly injured. They pushed my sister and I on the ground and then one of them urinated on us. He didn’t have enough pee to wet us. His aim was poor too. So only the bottom rim of my dress got a little wet. This will sound bizarre, but I felt only relief, cause it meant they wouldn’t rape us. They wouldn’t touch us after the guy had urinated on us.

A terror far worse than the fear of being raped then took over. They kidnapped Zainab. They told us they were going to use her to send her ahead in booby trapped buildings.

We haven’t seen her since. Now every time I close my eyes I see Zainab’s blood covered mouth and her eyes. Her eyes were spitting fire. She didn’t look afraid, she looked enraged like I have never seen rage before or since. The soldiers had the most restless eyes I have ever seen. I didn’t know eyes can look around so maniacally. They were scared too.

I think about her all the time. What are they doing to her? Is she alive? Knowing her nature… Did she kill one of them? My sister has become more and more sadistic. She says Zainab is wandering around somewhere, pregnant.

There’s a level of disaster that makes you like immune to more disaster.

I can now walk past a boy with no hands and no feet and only spot his T-shirt with a print ‘I am not shouting, I am Arab’ and I will smile, sometimes only realizing the boy had no limbs hours later.

The funniest T-shirt I have seen so far is this. You see: Leg day at the gym, with no check next to it. Cold shower, no check to it. Study new language for one hour. No check to it. And the last line is: Shoarma. With a check to it. Ok, maybe it’s not funny to you, but it really is to me.

I of course do not have words to describe what I would do to eat shoarma. Hunger is like having your brain snatched by a rat who’s drunk way too much caffeine and had ADHD to begin with.

You’re still ok if you are thinking about food and looking for food. The critical stage is when you see people stand around at corners, not moving anymore. Just staring. Like those people who pretend to be statues for tourists. Those are close to dying.

You also see starving people who are strangely bloated. You might think they are morbidly obese, but they are done for. A medical student explained to me what causes it, but I can’t remember any kind of new facts. Nothing gets into my skull anymore. Except for an Israeli bullet maybe.

Humor is how my sister and I cope. Mum will yell at us and criticize our insane jokes, but sometimes she will be ready to slap us and will be laughing at the same time.

I don’t know why am able to write today. I thought I’d never put a full sentence to paper ever again.

Maybe it means Zainab was freed and my nervous system picks up on that and is now unfrozen.

My sister says it’s my last gasp and I will die today.

She’s read this diary and tells me to add more love stories, cause otherwise it will never be a Netflix series.

I told her Netflix is too busy preparing romantic, heroic series about some Israeli girl fighting off 500 Hamas guys with a sharp spoon on October 7th while dressing the wounds of her nerdy, defenseless, but ever so woke boyfriend who at first refuses to serve in the IDF, but then has a change of heart and accepts to be conscripted and then goes on to detonate a hospital full of evil terrorists. Then they have babies and there is a sunset and new appartment blocks full of settlers from New York in Gaza City in the background. The end.

Lack of food ensures you no longer know if you are awake or dreaming.

I have seen people shot walking beside me and all I could think of is whether they had bread or dried fruit in their pockets.

I see stray cats and wonder what they taste like.

I have kicked a boy in the groin to make him drop a moulded loaf of bread.

He was an orphan with only two fingers on his right hand. I left him crying and made off with the bread and now I will hate myself forever. I haven’t been able to look at a mirror ever since. Not because my skincare routine has been rather poor since the genocide started, but because am afraid I will scratch off my own face for being the monster I have become.