What is your destination is the most asked question in Gaza City nowadays. You try to have a normal conversation with somebody and find yourself, suddenly, asking or answering this question:
“What’s your destination?”
During the past weeks, Gazans have raced towards the south; not for a medal or a prize, but rather for survival. It was a race to find a house at any price, or a piece of land to put a tent that hardly protect them from heat and cold. Though the winners were many, however, all of them were losers.
Every time someone asks me, “What’s your destination?” I pause, not because I want to find the right answer, but rather because I do not have one! I have not left my home since this massacre started. I stayed and paid a price for my decision. I was besieged and injured. I lost so much, but I did not leave. The house was my permanent destination.
The army is approaching, they tell me. I know that well, I say, but the truth is that I do not know any other destination. I am not familiar with the roads south of the valley. I have no place to stay there. I don’t have a tent to take shelter off. I do not know how to live in the open air. I haven’t got enough money to rent a new appartement for me and my mother. Two years of massacre have drained every coin I used to have.
I am well-aware of the danger, but I also know that there are no options left. I try to remain solid up till the last breath, however that would mean that the tanks shall come closer to my home. It will surround it like it did before. At that moment, we know that we shall be forced out by the army. That will be the final departure from Gaza through military checkpoints where soldiers search you.
Survivors tell stories of how they were stolen at the checkpoints, arrested, raped, and executed only because soldiers felt like doing that. I know the consequences of staying home well, but I also realize that there is no place for me in the south, too. If the situation gets worse faster, I rather die here in my home and not cross checkpoints and get humiliated.
From Gaza City, north of the valley, Occupied Palestine.
23 September 2025
Bayan Abu Sultan
(Translated by Palestinian Stories)
