The Storm That Took Souls!

Dec 25, 2025

Gaza

The tents in our neighborhood before the night of the storm.

When the Sun Leaves…

In Gaza, the sun means everything...

And when the sun disappears, everything disappears with it.

Even hope!

To live in a city that depends almost entirely on the sun is to live on a pause. When clouds gather and days stretch without sunlight, life slowly drains away. Phones die, connections vanish. Power banks become useless bricks. The outside world grows distant.

The Storm That Took Souls.

For days, a violent storm swept through Gaza. The sun vanished behind heavy skies, the storm came carrying relentless rain, piercing cold, screaming winds, and with them, fear!

It did not only take the sun.

It took lives!

In Gaza, finding a shelter during a storm is no longer a basic instinct, it is a luxury. To have a place where rain does not seep through thin fabric, where wind does not tear the thin walls apart, where cold does not crawl into your bones, this is now our highest aspiration.

Tents were never meant for winter!

Winter and tents are contradictions that cannot coexist. They shake violently with every gust of wind, folding and trembling like paper caught in a storm. Rain penetrates their fragile ceilings, pooling inside, soaking blankets and clothes.

Some people, out of desperation rather than choice, seek refuge near the remains of their destroyed homes.

Walls that no longer qualify as a shelter.

Structures that are unsafe, cracked, leaning, never meant to protect anyone. And yet, people pitch their tents beneath these broken roofs, believing that even partial concrete might soften the rain’s impact on the thin fabric above their heads.

Call it a risk.

Call it foolishness.

But the truth is simpler and more painful... they have no choice.

When Homes Betray Their People.

What no one expected was betrayal!

From the storm, and from the homes themselves. Continuous rain soaked the already weakened walls. Structures damaged by months of bombardment absorbed water they could no longer hold.

Their foundations, already unstable, grew heavier. And gravity did the rest.

Homes collapsed!

Not empty structures, but homes with people inside ... seeking safety.

In our neighborhood, a house collapsed over two siblings, a young man and a young woman in their twenties. They were preparing food when the walls gave away without warning.

The girl died instantly and the boy survived ... at first.

Trapped beneath the rubble, still breathing, still alive. But when rescue crews arrived and heavy machinery was brought to lift the debris, the pressure shifted.

The rubble crushed his body. He took his final breath there, under what was once his home!

A New Kind of War.

Life in Gaza is harsh, but winter here is harsher than anywhere else in the world.

To have your home, the place you instinctively run to for protection, become the reason for your death is something no one ever imagined.

As rain pounds the ground violently, I hear ambulance sirens cutting through the storm.

Each sound freezes my heart, another house has fallen.

More victims, maybe.

This feels like a new kind of war… one that arrives silently, without airstrikes or warnings.

Cruel in an unfamiliar way.

Unpredictable.

Unfair!

Even homes are no longer safe in Gaza. After more than twenty houses collapsed during the storm, people began asking a question that has no answer:

Where are we supposed to go?

Where is safety?

Does it even exist anymore?

Rain or Death?

If your tent floods, you face the cold.

If you move into the remains of your home, you risk collapse.

In that moment, what do you choose?

To escape the rain or to escape death?

This is not exaggeration! This is the daily calculation people in Gaza are forced to make.

And while the world sees rain as calming, as background noise for warm rooms and hot drinks... here, rain is fear.

Rain is danger.

Rain is the sound of walls weakening and lives ending.

Waiting for the Sun…

To live in a city that depends on the sun is to live on borrowed hours. We wait for the sun, the return of light, the return of something that resembles normality.

We wait for the sun like people wait for rescue, because when it rises, life flickers back on.

But until then, we sit in darkness, cold, and uncertainty, wondering if the walls around us will last another night.

In Gaza, the sun does not just rise…

It revives us.

And when it disappears, everything disappears with it.