Ahmed Alnajjar

A painful question… Home for me is not just the place I was born, but the hurt that grew with me, and the losses that taught me the meaning of patience. It is the house that was damaged, and the tent that sheltered me for long months; it is the daily waiting in water queues and bathroom lines, and the constant feeling of being threatened even while silent.

Home is every moment I lived in Gaza, among people I love and fear to lose; and it is also every memory etched inside me after I had to leave it. To me, home is not just a place… home is the wound that teaches me to hold on to life.

My journey began as a simple Palestinian young man with a great passion for media, for football, and for everything to do with telling people’s stories. I grew up in a loving, conservative environment, and from childhood I tried to catch details, follow the news, and write stories. When I entered university and chose to study media at Al-Azhar University in Gaza, it was not a random choice, but an extension of my dream to be a voice in this world. Not only my own voice, but the voice of those whom no one listens to.

During my studies, I worked on improving myself in every possible way. I entered multiple fields: journalistic writing, graphic design, video editing, content management, and field coverage. I worked with different institutions like “Amwaj Sports” and the university radio; I presented bulletins, produced reports, and covered matches from the heart of the stadiums. Media was a big arena for me, and the stadiums were not just sports spaces, they were stages for dreams, ambition, and teamwork.

The moment I felt that my dream became real was when I participated in covering the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. I was part of the pulse of the event, breathing global media, feeling like I had reached a place I had dreamed of for years. That achievement crowned years of fatigue and perseverance, and made me believe I could reach further than I ever imagined.

But just as Gaza gives you few joyful moments, it takes them away quickly.

With the start of the recent war, my life was turned completely upside down. I was forced to leave my home after the shelling intensified in our area, and moved to my aunt’s house in the south of the Gaza Strip. On the morning of 12 November 2023, at 9:30, I was sitting with my uncle in the yard talking about the matches from the night before, and suddenly a violent explosion changed everything. Day turned into darkness, the place filled with the choking smell of gunpowder, and an orange flash cutting through the darkness. I lost my hearing temporarily, ran barefoot outside, not knowing whether I was alive or dreaming, and all I cared about was: “Is my family okay?”

Thanks to God, we survived. But from there a stage harder than any shelling began…

I lived more than five months inside a tent, in the harshest conditions a person could imagine. The tent neither sheltered from rain nor cold, and the night was a fierce adversary, the cold attacking the body quietly. Mud, humidity, cold, cramped space were constant details of my day, while everything else was changing… from getting water, to access to a bathroom, to a meal if one could be found.

My body started to deteriorate under the burden of hunger, stress, and exhaustion. I lost about twenty kilograms of weight, and there was nothing to compensate for that. All around me spoke of waiting: the water queue, the toilet queue, the aid queue. We were living by survival instinct, on crumbs of support, and on a hope nobody saw but us.

Though life in the tent was harsh, I refused to be merely a victim or passive recipient. I volunteered as a facilitator in schools and camps that turned into displacement centers in Rafah. I worked with children; we drew, sang, played, told stories to ease even a moment of their fear. I also took part in distributing vegetables, hot meals, hygiene kits, and basic aid. I felt I was still human… and still able to give even while exhausted.

But what appears outwardly does not tell everything. During the targeting, I suffered injuries in parts of my body, classified as “minor” because hospitals were full of more critical cases. There was no room for me among them, nor was treatment available to me. I lived months silently suffering, without medicines, without painkillers, without even a proper diagnosis. The night was the cruellest… I felt cold piercing through my wounds, my body trembling from pain, and nobody to share that pain.

Even when the wound began to heal, the pain remained. Every movement reminded me that I was still wounded, and that there was no true cure except leaving this place. After a long suffering, I finally managed to leave Gaza for Egypt. The journey was laden with fear and the unknown, but I had no other option. I left with my body, but my heart remained there… in my tent, in my aunt’s house, in the voices of people I said goodbye to and do not know if I will see again.

In Egypt, a new stage began. I embraced the pain but decided to start anew. I received treatment at my own expense, physically I began to recover, but psychologically I needed more time. I worked remotely with a development organization, and I started to return to media through another door… design, digital content, campaigns. The road is still difficult, and displacement is not easy, but inside me something refuses to surrender.

Today I am not the same person I was before the war…

I am a version full of pain, but also full of awareness. I have come to see things deeper, and I have become more convinced that the media is not just a profession but a tool for resistance, for documentation, for survival.

I am a person living on the edge between memory and dream… but I remain believing, determined, and continuing… not for myself only, but for all who lost everything and are still holding on to life.

I have faced many challenges in my life, some visible, some internal, but all have left a deep imprint on my personality and how I deal with life.

From the beginning, I had a speech impediment from childhood. Many people thought this might prevent my entry into media or presenting, but quite the opposite happened. I turned this challenge into motivation. I worked on myself, trained, stood in front of the camera, presented bulletins and reports, and every time I spoke loudly, I told the world: “I am not a broken voice, I am a voice that overcame fear.”

Another big challenge was the environment I worked in, especially in Gaza. Limited resources, few opportunities, and the political and economic situation are always pressing. Yet I did not wait for a chance, I made one. I taught myself design and editing skills; I worked freelancing, I volunteered, and I expanded my professional connections despite the siege.

But the greatest challenge was the recent war. When I lost almost everything: my work, my equipment, my archive, and my stability. I lived months in a tent, without treatment for my injuries, without enough food, with ongoing physical and psychological pain. I felt trapped not only by place, but by pain, by fear, by helplessness. And yet, I decided not to let reality break me.

I overcame all this with patience, by not stopping my community role even in the darkest conditions. I volunteered, empowered children, distributed aid, helped people… and through that, I helped myself.

Even when I left Gaza, things were not easy. I started from scratch, far from my family, paying for my own treatment, with a dream still unfulfilled.

I overcame the challenges because I chose to remain resilient. Not perfect, not superhuman… but true to myself, living on a simple hope: that what has passed will not be wasted, and that my voice, my word, my story might be a light for someone else living the same darkness.

In certain moments in my life I felt true inner strength, moments that were not fleeting but defining… They changed how I see myself and taught me that strength is sometimes born from the heart of fear, and my faith in the saying I made for myself grew: “Your weakness is your strength.”

The first moment was in April 2019, when I stood for the first time before the microphone on the university radio to present a bulletin live. At that time I was a media student, and I carried immense nervousness inside… not only because it was my first appearance, but because all my life I had fought the speech challenge. Many thought I would never enter this field, and inside myself I feared: Could I succeed? Would listeners accept me? Would my voice betray me?

But with the first sentence I uttered, I felt I broke an internal barrier that had held me for years. At that moment I felt that I had not only managed… I had launched. The bulletin ended, but afterward began a journey of confidence that continues to this day.

The second moment was on 1 March 2021 at 9:00 AM, during the closing of the “Wasla” program of the SDF organization. I stood in front of more than one hundred people for the first time in my life, and I delivered a speech of more than five minutes about my personal journey in the media. I spoke about my beginnings, about passion, about the first microphone, about moments of falling and rising, and how I kept working on myself despite all conditions.

I was not only speaking, I opened my heart in public. I faced my feelings, shared my experience with people honestly. I felt a great inner strength… not from applause, but from the sense that I no longer feared my voice, my story, or people.

These two moments, from the university mic to the Wasla platform, summarize how fear turned into energy, anxiety into message, silence into voice.

Strength is not in never being afraid… strength is in confronting your fear, speaking, and continuing the path with your true voice. And again I say: “Your weakness is your strength.”

I hope my story is a simple but sincere reminder that a person does not have to be a superhero to endure… sometimes just continuing despite everything is a form of heroism.

My story is not about huge achievements, nor about a perfect life… My story is about an ordinary young person, facing harsh challenges: displacement, war, tent life, injuries, loss, but who did not allow them to break me. I tried, I fell, I stood up, and I carried on.

I hope everyone who hears me believes that however hard their circumstances are, they are not alone… and that they can create a small space of hope amid all this destruction.

I also hope that my story opens people’s eyes to our reality as Palestinians, not only as numbers or breaking news… but as ordinary people with dreams, ambitions, memories, and passion. The media is a tool not only for conveying news, but for conveying emotion… and I try to be part of that human voice that insists on speaking despite the bombing, despite the pain.

If anyone emerges from my story with a simple feeling called: “I too can continue,” then that is more than enough for me.

I want to say that my story is not unique… There are thousands of voices that still have not been able to make themselves heard, and perhaps never had the chance to share their pain. I am just one among many. And I hope you do not forget Gaza, and its people who lived and are still living daily tragedies. Remember that they are not just numbers in the news, but human beings with dreams, stories, and dignity… and they deserve to have their voices heard.