I hold my phone in one hand and my heart in the other
"While international law and the Geneva Conventions stipulate the protection of journalists, the mark we carry – the word “Press” – has become a target instead of protection."
Ansam al-Kitaa in Gaza City
I never imagined that my pen would become a lifeline, that my phone would become a wall behind which I hide from the horror of bombardment, and that my work would become my only path to survival and to feeling my humanity.
In many places, journalistic work is defined as a profession of troubles. But here in the city of life and death – Gaza City, as I like to call it – it is a profession of life and death. Journalism for me is not just reporting news, but waging a real battle with our bloody pain, and sometimes with death itself.
In many moments, death was closer to me than my breath. Each time I escaped death, I wondered: “Am I really lucky that I survived?” Then I quickly remembered that I am in a city besieged by death from every direction, harvesting souls every second, and that survival is only physical – the soul is trapped between the bodies of the dead and a past that has become mere memories.
I escaped death so many times. Once I had an interview with a family at a house, and as soon as I walked in, a bomb killed a young man on a motorcycle right in front of the house. I missed it by just a few seconds. There are endless situations like this, as if death plays hide and seek with me.
The helmet and vest are no longer tools to protect me as a journalist – they have become symbols of imminent danger. While international law and the Geneva Conventions stipulate the protection of journalists, the mark we carry – the word “Press” – has become a target instead of protection.
I sometimes tremble at the thought of wearing the vest, not because it’s heavy, but because it now identifies me as a journalist in a place where anyone who documents the truth is targeted. The vest carries me toward danger rather than protecting me from it.
I remember well every time I left my house to film a news story. I shook with every step I took and recited the Shahada, thinking: “What if this is the last time I document something? What if the next shell falls beside me? Will these words be published? Will anyone read them? Will anyone know about my insistence on documenting the suffering of the people of northern Gaza Strip?” How many times have I stood on the roof of my house, or at the Ghafri intersection in the middle of Jalaa Street in Gaza City, raising my phone high with one hand and holding my heart with the other, hoping that weak signal would manage to send a video file before the sounds of shells and missiles rise and pierce my body.
What does it mean to be a journalist without internet, without transportation, walking for long hours? I arranged an appointment to interview a family, but I arrived to find only the parents – their four children were killed in a raid the night before. But the family was thankful that at least they died in one piece and managed to bury them with dignity. You see a house completely damaged by bombardment, you thank God that at least the walls are still there.
People say Palestinians are resilient, and I am not sure if it is resilience or shock and trauma from the horrors we see every day.
When death takes family
But all these battles never prepared me for what was harder: personal loss. On 4 November 2023, I lost my nephew. He was only 17 years old.
He went out with his cousin to the Tel al-Hawa area to retrieve some belongings from the family house. We didn’t know that the area had become a “red zone”, and that the Israeli army was targeting everything that moved there.
He was hit in the stomach with what initially seemed like a minor injury. But the intense bombardment prevented ambulances or civil-defence vehicles from reaching him. Rescue teams were sent to save him, but they were also targeted. My nephew remained bleeding alone in the street until the next day, losing his life without anyone being able to reach out to him.
The tragedy didn’t end there. His body remained on the road for three full weeks. No one could bury him until the first truce, when residents near the area took it upon themselves to bury him hastily, without a funeral or farewell, away from his family and loved ones.
How can I comprehend that? I didn’t say goodbye to him, didn’t touch his hands, didn’t look at him for the last time. I couldn’t even say, “Allah yerhamu”, as if my tongue was stuck in denial. Sometimes I still see him laughing in front of me, or hear his voice calling me.
A week after his death, during the beginning of the ground operation, we were staying with my sister near the Al-Shifa Medical Complex. We lived through one of the harshest nights. That night was like nothing else – the shells never stopped, bullets were piercing the walls, and the sound alone was enough to paralyse the body. We slept on the floor, not daring to sit up, afraid that a stray bullet would pierce our bodies.
With morning’s arrival, everyone in the neighbourhood decided to leave collectively towards the only street, hoping that our numbers would protect us. I felt I was living through a new Nakba, the 1948 catastrophe.
I was crying as I fled, carrying my little nephew in my arms, and the tears wouldn’t stop. My feet were hurting, my heart was trembling, and fear was paralysing me, but I was walking despite everything. The things we used to see on television, we were now living.
Writing through grief
I write reports about families who lost their children, about children deprived of their childhood, about women who bury their dreams with their loved ones. But when I write about others, I find that I am also writing about myself. Every death story brings me back to my nephew, every image of a corpse reminds me of his corpse, every farewell reminds me I didn’t say goodbye to him.
In Gaza, death is not a passing event. It is a daily open wound. It is faces we miss in every corner, conversations suddenly cut off, and empty beds at night. But harder than death is being robbed of even the right to say goodbye.
In Gaza, danger didn’t chase only civilians – it chased us journalists too. The occupation knows that words can expose its crimes, so it turned journalists into direct targets. My colleagues carried nothing but their cameras and pens, yet they were targeted mercilessly.
So far, we have lost more than 246 journalists who were racing against time to tell what was happening before becoming breaking news themselves. I know faces among these martyrs – we shared fear and hope together, covered stories side by side, then they suddenly departed.
Every time I hear a new journalist’s name added to the martyrs’ list, I feel the bullet hit us all, and that the occupation doesn’t just want to kill us as individuals, but wants to erase the truth itself.
A name, not a number
Despite my love for Gaza City – the city where I was born, growing up in its alleys – the targeting of journalists and civilians together sometimes makes me think about leaving it. Not because I want to abandon it, but because I want to escape the death that chases us everywhere.
I am Ansam al-Kitaa, a journalist from the northern Gaza Strip. I am not a number on a victims’ list. I want to be a name, not a number.
I don’t want to die. I love life and fight every day to live it, not just survive. I dream of a better life and believe we deserve it, no matter how much they try to bury our dreams under the rubble.
Don’t forget us.
We are not numbers, not passing footage on news screens.
We are humans who dream, suffer, love, write, and live despite the death surrounding us. We only ask that our voices be heard, our stories told, our humanity respected.
Every day we live here is a battle for survival, to preserve our memory, our identity, what remains of us.
The word we write is resistance, the image we document is testimony, and our voice is the last scream before the rubble swallows the truth.
If this voice reaches you, don’t turn away from it. Listen, transmit it, and be a bridge between us and a world that seems to have forgotten that Gaza is not just geography, but faces, names, and small dreams fighting to stay alive.
My heart sankk