Mohammed Muhaisen writes from Gaza, where he’s surviving alongside his family with nowhere to go.
I never imagined we would sink this low… to this pit where we’ve even lost the ability to feel anger. A famine—real, bitter, and raw. No metaphors. No exaggerations. Homes are empty. Shelves are bare. Children’s stomachs growl from hunger. Mothers’ faces are pale with helplessness and despair.
No bread. No rice. Nothing.
Everything edible has been consumed, and people have started making meals out of things not fit for animals, let alone humans. Strange, grotesque food… But hunger teaches invention. At what cost?
Eight billion people on this planet watch us slowly skinned alive. They witness our deaths by starvation and bombing, then wipe their emotions onto their phone screens before returning to their warm dinners.
We appear in news reports like some gruesome episode in a long-running horror series. They watch us… Then go to sleep.
And the Arabs? Ah, the Arabs!
While our children’s empty stomachs drum with hunger, their drums beat to welcome Trump—the lead cheerleader of the butcher, the official sponsor of our starvation, the backstage architect of this hell.
Is there not a single man amongst you?
Just one with the courage to ask this cursed visitor to send food trucks instead of rolling out the red carpet? Is there not a single leader who wears his name with dignity, and dares to shout: “Enough support for starvation!”
We’re not asking for a country, or victory, or even reconstruction.
We ask for one thing only—a mouthful of food to keep a dying soul alive.
And I end as I began:
” حسبي الله ونعم الوكيل”
“God is sufficient for us, and He is the best disposer of affairs.”
Taste of victory, in a cup of tea
We will win—yes, we truly will.
But our victory will be quiet, like a lone smile at a funeral.
We’ll celebrate shyly, like whispering of triumph in the presence of the dead—not out of fear of the living, but out of respect for those who never lived to see this day.
We will win, not because we’re strong, but because we survived.
Because despite the rubble, destruction, and relentless disappointment, our hearts still beat.
We—the ones left—will gather, picking ourselves up from beneath the ruins of shattered homes. We’ll meet under a tattered tent that groans with the wind, and lift our heads just enough to say: “We made it through.”
But how will we celebrate?
Ah, we imagined it: opening a bottle of vintage cherry wine—one of those stolen by the Nazis from old French cathedrals, sold later in Geneva, Bern, or Berlin.
We imagined raising our glasses—not to toast the war, but to toast survival.
That bottle? It’s priceless. But even that can’t compare to the souls that slipped through this inferno.
Did you believe me? Hahaha! No, no, my dear…
We don’t drink wine. Our feet never touched European soil to buy their stolen bottles.
We don’t have the luxury of vintage cherries.
What we have—if we’re lucky—is a kettle of tea, boiling over the firewood of burnt dreams.
And so, when all of this is over, we—we-the survivors-will—sit, sipping tea from chipped cups in our local markets.
We’ll look around, not to rejoice, but to count the missing.
O God, save us as You have saved us before. Feed us in our hunger, and grant us safety from fear.
What do the hungry do in Gaza?
In Gaza, the hungry are not asked what they feel—only what they will do.
What the hungry does there is not just a reaction to hunger; it is a slow dance on the edge of collapse.
He either leaves his home, if he still has one, or emerges from a worn-out tent, searching for a morsel. Not because he believes he’ll find it, but to escape the pleading eyes of his children, or the silent pain in the face of his wife or mother.
He flees, not toward hope, but to preserve what little is left of his dignity—even if it’s a lie. He flees to avoid the shame when someone asks, “Is this today’s food?”
Or he stays curled in a corner, counting his breaths, guarding what’s left of his worn-out body, like a soldier guarding his last bullet in a final battle.
He moves only enough to survive, waiting for the whistle of salvation—if it comes.
That whistle more mysterious than life itself:
Is it the opening of a passage?
The birth cry of a new bomb?
Or a fleeting chance at survival, like a dream?
This is hunger in Gaza.
It does not scream—it stays silent.
It does not weep—but carves into the body a soul capable of enduring the impossible.
A group of his friends have started a fundraiser campaign to help his family evacuate from Gaza. You can contribute here
Muhammed Muhaisen was born in Gaza, Palestine. He holds a PhD from Universiti Sains Malaysia and an undergrad from the International Islamic University of Malaysia.
He was meant to start as the teaching faculty at the University of Gaza and has since become a storyteller of his people.
