I always thought of Gaza as a place where time folded in on itself. A closed world – dense, familiar, overwhelming – where you grow too fast or not at all.I was the child my aunts, my older cousins, and even my friends’ mothers would pull into conversations about family issues, relationships, and everyday problems.Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of listMy teacher called me “the sharpened tongue”, not because I was rude, but because I refused to be shaped into someone softer, quieter, more acceptable.Sometimes, I slipped into the moments that reminded me I was a child – like sewing tiny clothes for my Barbies with my cousins.But usually, I hovered somewhere between the world of children who didn’t quite understand me and the world of adults whose conversations I somehow understood.The world callingOn Fridays, my family used to drive from our neighbourhood in as-Sudaniya down the coastal al-Rashid Street to Rafah – about an hour’s drive.One of those days, Gaza felt less like a cage, more like a home.I was 12, and my siblings and I joked about old memories – the way my brother used to mispronounce words, the tiny disasters that became inside jokes only we understood.We didn’t wander far from my parents, talking and laughing, then walking to the shore as the smell of spiced fish and the cool sea breeze wrapped the day in something warm and familiar.They aren’t grand memori …
