Gaza Is a Land of Marvels, Where Tea Tastes of Victory and Resistance

These people were dragging themselves out of the depths of the war’s darkness and back home. This time, their migration was not forced, they themselves were the very victory walking the apocalyptic streets of Gaza.

The narrow, coastal Al-Rasheed Road was once more a thoroughfare for a flood of people, burdened by the last remnants of their lives – all stuffed into plastic bags and white sacks – as they migrated. They were exhausted, desperate individuals whose faces were etched with the aging pain of war. Yet, for the people of Gaza, this constant movement over the last two years was merely one of the thousands of afflictions imposed upon them. From Jabalia to Khan Yunis, from Khan Yunis to Rafah, from Rafah to Nuseirat, and so on – this weary cycle of displacement repeated itself time and again, and this forced migration was an absolute necessity!

This time, however, was different. This time, these people were dragging their half-alive bodies out of the depths of the war’s darkness and back home. This time, their migration was not forced; they themselves were the very victory walking the apocalyptic streets of Gaza – they were Resistance itself! The day after the ceasefire, hardly anyone remained in the Nuseirat Camp. Half a million people having survived a full-scale genocide, set off on foot from all corners of Gaza toward the north and center. Half a million people who, once again, unleashed a flood – a flood perhaps greater than the one named Al-Aqsa.

Do you think they were unaware that no homes remained? Or that the streets were plowed over, with rubble fusing the earth and sky of the neighborhoods together? Do you think they had forgotten that their families were torn to pieces under the debris of what they once called home, with no trace left of their olive and orange trees? They knew. They knew Israel had laced every step of their return path with death traps – in canned food, amidst the plastic balls of young boys, or in women’s handbags. They knew that only ashes and concrete remained of the greenery of Beit Hanoun and its many olive trees. They knew, and yet the sound of life was louder than all of it – the sound of a cart piled high with the belongings of seven or eight families heading to Shuja’iyya. The murmur of children and the scraping of worn-out sandals and shoes dragging across Gaza’s ravaged earth… whatever it was, the sound of life was louder!

In Gaza, it seems life is immortal. Even if you turn the entire city into a cemetery – so much so that even the local guides cannot recognize the routes, and the rotten bones of people crunch underfoot along the roads – life still blossoms more vibrantly than anywhere else. The people of Gaza are worthy of life. In fact, it is as if they are life itself a people whom no death can kill and no war can extinguish. Just as Saleh Al-Ja’farawi, a Gaza reporter, said in the final moments before his martyrdom: “I swear by God, you would need a million years to break the will of this nation, and you still wouldn’t succeed. Since the second day of the ceasefire, bulldozers have come to clear the roads, but the people did not wait. They started rebuilding their homes themselves, repairing them and clearing the rubble. Allahu Akbar [God is the Greatest] to you, O nation! By God, we deserve to live…”

For these people, nothing holds more value than the soil of their homeland and their dignity. As long as this land exists, they can build a home upon it a thousand times over. That is why, if you look among their ranks this time, smiles and the song of freedom never leave their lips, and their hands show nothing but the sign of victory. They have every right. If you look closely, this is not a ceasefire; it is sheer victory. For two full years, Israel’s machine of genocide spent billions of dollars and dropped 70,000 tons of bombs on these people, attempting to strip them of life. It employed the most inhumane collective tortures to ensure their path home was irreversible and that they would abandon their land. But ultimately, after a period of this apocalyptic war, it is the people of Gaza who are returning to their homes and rebuilding them from scratch.

If you ask me, I’ll say Gaza is a land of marvels! The homes that the Gazans are so eager to return to don’t even exist. They are ruins of cement blocks and large chunks of iron, which they themselves have dubbed the “Stone Desert!” It’s not like a refugee camp where there might be some water and electricity, however scarce, and you can’t even find food in its neighborhoods. Yet, they are smiling, prostrating in thanks upon the chaotic, stony streets, and saying, “Alhamdulillah [Praise God] for our home…”

Of course, this too is their ancestral legacy: the return home! In the encyclopedia of their lives, though a simple phrase, it carries the full weight of victory. The proof lies in the keys that have remained in their old men’s pockets and tied to the corners of their grandmothers’ scarves since 1948. Their roots run deep in the alleyways of Palestine – roots that Israel spent two full years plowing over Gaza inch by inch, attempting to tear them out. But it was too small to reach the depths of the soul and the roots of these people. And today, they have handed those very plowed neighborhoods back to the people of Gaza, with their own hands.

Now, all half a million people have reached their homes, even though the path was arduous and exhausting. At times, the sight of a decaying corpse emerging from the earth occasionally rekindled the full anguish of the war, and the scarcity of water and food continued to plague the frail bodies of the genocide survivors. Yet, these legends of resistance embraced the hardship of the journey and returned.

Unfortunately, the reality is that more than 90 percent of the homes in the Gaza Strip were victims of the war. Like the home of Suheir Al-Absi, a 50-year-old Palestinian mother who, upon reaching the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood, could not even distinguish the rubble of her house. She didn’t know which of the toppled columns and giant, piled-up stones was hers. In her own words, it was as if a nuclear bomb had dropped in the middle of her neighborhood.

The entire neighborhood was destroyed this way; not a single concrete column remained intact. But Suheir and her neighbors refuse to leave their homes. They have pitched tents atop the rubble, made sunshades with scraps of fabric, and this has become their small, magnificent palace for life. If you sit and listen to her, you will hear her say:

“I will live in the very ruined area where I grew up. A person can only feel safe and at peace in the place where they belong.”

This is the consensus among all Gazans. Nothing else should be expected of them. People who did not frown in the face of the collective martyrdom of their families and stood firm with the golden mantra of Hasbi Allah [God is sufficient for me] – it would be naive to think they would now mourn over a few pieces of iron and stone. Now, Rah ne’id nibni [“We will rebuild again”] is linked to their Hasbi Allah wa ni’mal Wakil [God is sufficient for me, and He is the best Disposer of affairs], and they are determined to stay and rebuild.

And they’re right. The Palestinians possess an extraordinary patience for staying and rebuilding. The proof is someone like Mu’ayed, a young man from Gaza. The one who, when the ceasefire was announced in January 2025, returned to his neighborhood and rebuilt his half-destroyed house. That house is now nothing more than scattered pieces of stone on the ground, yet he still declares: “We will build it again!”

The story of staying and building, the story of staying and pitching tents on the rubble, is the story of most people in Gaza. But among them are those whose homes retain a fragile, broken roof, or a single room amidst the fallen apartments that still holds the meaning of “home.” It is here that the mission of the women of Gaza reveals itself once again – the same women who carried the entirety of life on their shoulders throughout the war so that no one in this cemetery would be overcome by the bitter sense of despair and death.

These days in the alleyways of Gaza, the women of Gaza are pulling life out from under the rubble of their homes piece by piece: a bottle of perfume that still holds its scent, a piece of clothing that survived the war, a pot that is cracked but can still bear the load of Maqlubeh (upside-down rice and vegetable dish) and sit over a fire, and so on. They then clear the construction debris and paint the one remaining room with the colors of life as if a missile had never visited that house.

But the return home is more painful for some – for those whose entire families are buried beneath the rubble of their homes. The war had never given them a chance to clear the heavy concrete and iron pieces and gather their families again – this time, their bodies. Take, for instance, Lina, a young girl who is the sole survivor of her family. She sits every day next to the mountain of concrete that was once their home, calling out her loved ones trapped beneath the debris one by one: “Mom, Mina, Dua, Abdu, and…” Then, the volcano of her grief erupts, and tears overwhelm her. Of course, there are many like Lina in Gaza. As a matter of fact, who is in Gaza these days who doesn’t have a loved one buried under the rubble?

The matter becomes even more agonizing when you find decomposed pieces of your mother in a corner of the house, or see a piece of your child’s burnt flesh on a piece of stone. It is a scene tragically repeated often in Gaza, but believe it or not, the people of Gaza carry out the customs and rituals of life step by step, even in this cemetery: they gather wood, boil water, and brew tea. They brew tea and they live. Life continues in Gaza because, on the path of truth, there is no death – there is only life.

The Article Was Written by Zeinab Nadali and first published in Khamenei.ir.