War Days – Fragmented Lives
By M. Mortaja

There are stories I wish I never had to write. This one haunts me in particular—not because it’s unique, but because it’s heartbreakingly common in the streets of Gaza.

I didn’t hear this story from the man himself. It reached me through a psychiatrist—one of the few still working under impossible conditions.

The man had come seeking help, dragging his wounded leg and heavier soul into the clinic, looking not for medicine, but for something even harder to find these days: peace.

peace

He lived on a.h Street, in a building filled with his brothers and their families.

A life once rich with warmth and noise. Then the missile came. One strike, and his world collapsed—literally.

His wife and four children were gone. His brothers too. Only he remained, with a spinally-injured son and two surviving sisters-in-law.

Six months ago, he married one of them—not out of love, but survival.

She had lost her husband, and her child was the only one left alive.

Together, they tried to piece together a version of family from the ruins. Now he was thinking of marrying the second sister-in-law. Her parents were killed.

She had no home, no safety net. In Gaza today, companionship is a kind of rescue.

They all live in a tent—no walls, no bathroom, just a fragile shelter stitched together with grief and necessity.

The psychiatrist told me the man barely spoke.

When he did, his voice was low, his words simple, but his silence was louder than any scream, He wasn’t angry. He wasn’t bitter.

He was just lost—caught in the fog of trauma, trying to make decisions no human should ever have to make.

This war hasn’t just destroyed buildings. It has torn through the minds and hearts of our people.

And it’s in those quiet, intimate conversations—in clinics, in tents, on broken sidewalks—that the true weight of this war is revealed.

These are not just war stories. These are the shattered blueprints of what could have been—rewritten in blood, loss, and the heavy silence of survival

War Days – Fragmented Lives