By Alaa Hijazi

The terror was too much for her heart to bear. It stopped suddenly. She collapsed into seizures and lost consciousness.

On the morning of the third day of Eid, there were no celebrations at Al-Maidan Kuwaiti Hospital. The machines groaned, exhausted bodies filled every corner, and the silence, occasionally interrupted by the moans of patients, was heavier than any other sound.

On one of the narrow hospital beds, Haya Murtaja lay alone, clinging to what remained of her life, while the machines around her tried to keep her heart beating. But they could not restore the sense of safety she had lost months ago.

Companion of Displacement and Hope

Haya was not just a name or another war story—she was my friend. I used to meet her almost every day in a small phone-charging shop in Deir al-Balah, where we sought a connection to the world amid the isolation imposed by the war. The place was not comfortable, but it was a space for us to talk about hope, about return, about the days we would meet again in Gaza, without fear or displacement.

Talking to her was never boring. Despite everything she had endured, Haya was someone who brought reassurance. Her words were always full of hope, even when circumstances worsened.

During Ramadan 2024, she remained alone with her husband and children after her family had managed to leave before the border crossing was closed. She tried to join them, but couldn’t. And when she lost hope of traveling, she decided to return north, to Al-Wahda Street, to where her home once stood. She didn’t know that the return she had dreamed of would be the end.

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Between Displacement and Fear

Haya, born in 1994, was about to turn thirty in August. A journalism and media graduate, a mother of two daughters, the wife of Mohammad Al-Shannat, and the sister of Nadine, Hiba, Yasmeen, Mohammad, and Khidr. She was the eldest daughter, the first joy of her parents, the kind, obedient, and devoted daughter, and the loyal friend whose company never grew tiresome.

From the early days of the war, Haya and her family left Al-Wahda Street in Gaza and moved to Nuseirat, where they stayed in a room with a roof made of metal sheets, in a border area where bullets and shells fell daily. Remaining there wasn’t an option, so they had to relocate again—to Khan Yunis, to a small storage unit with no windows, a floor flooded with sewage, and an infestation of insects. Life there was unbearable.

Haya was displaced once more, this time to Deir al-Balah, where she settled in a tent in a refugee camp, clinging to the fragile hope that the war would end and she could return to Gaza—not to a palace, but to a home that felt like a homeland.

The Dream of Return

At the beginning of the truce, Haya saw the return to the north as the fulfillment of a long-awaited dream. She did not return immediately, still hoping to reunite with her family, who had managed to leave Gaza before the border closed. But the crossings shut down, taking with them her chance to see them again, leaving Haya stranded between a destroyed homeland and an unfulfilled dream.

When her hope of traveling faded, she returned to Gaza—to her rented apartment on Al-Wahda Street—and tried to adjust to life after destruction. But the war, which had granted her a brief respite, did not allow her to breathe.

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It returned suddenly, more brutal than before.

The Moment Her Heart Stopped

One night during Ramadan, Haya left her home to visit a friend. They sat together, drinking Nescafé, talking about the days that had passed and the days still to come. But their conversation was never completed. Suddenly, the bombings roared. Airstrikes rained down like a storm. There was no time to think—only to run and seek shelter. Haya was not struck by shrapnel, but she did not survive.

The terror was too much for her heart to bear. It stopped suddenly. She collapsed into seizures and lost consciousness. They tried to revive her, rushing her to Al-Shifa Hospital, but it was overcrowded. There were no beds in the intensive care unit, no available machines—so she was transferred to Al-Maidan Kuwaiti Hospital, where she was admitted to the “intensive care unit,” which was little more than a wooden barracks inside a tent camp.

There were no advanced medical devices, not even the means to perform a brain scan to assess her condition. The doctors were helpless, the hospital lacked resources, and the war left them no choice but to wait.

They tried multiple times to disconnect her from life-support machines, but each time she suffered severe seizures—as if her body refused to leave, as if her heart, despite all the suffering, was still searching for a reason to hold on.

But on the morning of the third day of Eid, as Gaza drowned in death more than ever before, Haya’s heart stopped for the final time. She took her last breath alone, with no family to hold her hand, no one to whisper a farewell. The doctors were the only ones there, carrying the heartbreaking news, but there was no one to deliver it to.

Her family was in another country. Her husband and his relatives had returned to the south, as the north had turned to ruins. Her children were waiting for her—perhaps still unaware that she would never return.

War Kills in Other Ways

War did not kill Haya with a missile. It did not take her life with a bullet. But it claimed her in another way, just as it has taken so many others. It took her with relentless fear, endless anxiety, and unjust deprivation.

It took her with cold, hunger, displacement, and the constant shadow of death—until it finally caught up with her.

That morning, Eid was not a celebration. It was a heavy farewell, a silent grief, and tears that had no one to wipe them away. It was another morning of war, where loss is the only thing that never ends, and where the hope Haya tried to hold onto faded before it could ever come true.

(The Palestine Chronicle)