Marah’s Story, or The Disintegration of a Country Family

In this miserable country love stories end too soon and families fall apart in the blink of an eye. 

This is how Marah Kamal begins her life story and if you know anyone from Gaza, you know how much they love the land they live on. They literally ‘worship the ground they walk upon.’ Only God is loved more than the land. So, for Marah to call her country miserable, is to admit that after a year and a half of war, there is nothing left. Even pregnancy is a curse.

Here, in Gaza, a woman becomes pregnant and rejoices, endures the pain of labor and gives birth, then breastfeeds, cares for her baby and loses sleep. She pours her life into raising her children, all so she can watch them grow up. Then the Occupation decides to bomb a house and it’s as if a mother’s son never even existed. There isn’t even a body left for burial. This country is not fit for marriage, pregnancy or childbirth. Ditto education and work. It’s a land of orphans and widows, of the dead and the wounded, of tarps and tents and shattered streets.

These are the dilemmas we will never have to face. How long does it take you to recall all the names of loved ones who have been murdered? How many of us have watched our children die? Or our brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles, husbands or wives? This is how Israel practices birth control on Palestinians. All we worry about is Roe vs. Wade.

I want the world to hear my story and stand by me however it can. I want to find a glimmer of hope for a simple, peaceful life filled with the warmth of family and friends. I want to live like the simplest of people. I want my children to be able to do what they wish, eat what they crave and play whenever they like. I just want to live a life free from death and destruction. Am I asking for too much? 

Simple requests from a widowed young woman who studied genetic engineering and IVF fertilization in college. Now, she raises her orphaned children, three-year-old Sana and baby Adam, as they play games of dodging bullets from the sky. No one needs fertility help in Gaza anymore. They’re all waiting to die instead.

This war has devastated my life. It stole my name, my life, my hope—everything. First and foremost, I lost my husband Bahaa. Just a week before the war started, on October 1st, Bahaa bought a car. He had recently gotten a degree in accounting but finding work is hard in Gaza, so he decided to become a taxi-driver. Even after October 7th, after we fled our home, he kept working, driving anyone who needed to be evacuated from northern Gaza to the south. There were infants, the elderly, people with disabilities, the wounded and the sick. He helped many people evacuate to safer areas without charging them a single shekel. He said to me, “This is all I can offer to people… how could I withhold it?” I remember him once saying, “A man once rode with me all the way from the far north to the far south. He had no money for the fare and was ashamed. He had a bag of lemons, and I told him, ‘Give me a lemon, so you don’t feel embarrassed.’”

Bahaa died on November 3, 2023, while driving his taxi with his brother-in-law Mohammed to reunite with his family. They died the usual way people have died in Gaza since October 7th: as casualties of war. In this case, shot to death.

Have you grown tired of my story, or shall I go on? Marah asks me.

To me, Bahaa was a hero who stood by his people until the very last moment with everything he had. He didn’t lock himself away in fear. He lived his life with courage, and to this day, I feel pride every time someone tells me how kind and humane Bahaa was. Now, I have to be everything for my two small children. I have to bury this heavy sorrow deep in my heart and keep on living, even with a knife pressed against it…for the sake of these two little hopes, to secure a life for them.

Marah’s tragedy is not unique. As you probably already know, it is commonplace in Gaza. With every good turn comes bad news. After nearly three months of blockading humanitarian aid, the embargo was lifted, only for the Occupation to massacre hundreds of people waiting to be fed. Marah thinks of her children when she feels like giving up.

I remember one time, my daughter Sana told me after waking up at dawn that she had dreamt of her father. He came to her and gave her red jelly with sugar. Sugar has become so expensive in Gaza, and she refuses to drink milk without it. I’m sorry, my love, on behalf of this entire world. And my baby Adam, who lost his father before he ever got to hear him say “Baba” has now started saying it to his grandfather instead.

As I finish Marah’s story on July 1st, 2025 I hear, yet again, there is talk of another cease-fire deal. Will it ever be over? Or is this the new way of war? Designed to string us along because the people in power don’t want it to end?

The post Marah’s Story, or The Disintegration of a Country Family first appeared on Dissident Voice.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Eros Salvatore.