The pains of Gazans are wounds that can only be soothed with patience and faith Tattered tents, overwhelming hunger, and harsh loss are the defining features of Gaza

Years ago, they sat in warm evenings, sipping tea with their families, watching the news from afar, commenting on scenes of destruction as if they belonged to another world—one that had nothing to do with them. No one ever imagined that the day would come when they would become the news, and that their images would shift from calm faces gathered around a small table to heartbreaking scenes of trembling bodies beneath torn tents that shield neither from winter’s cold nor its cruelty.

Their pains today are countless: they begin with the loss of the homes that once held them together, and do not end with the fear haunting their children’s eyes each time rain pounds on the tent like a new warning. Men carry what remains of life on their shoulders, women battle the cold with whatever blankets they can find, and children search for a new laugh in a world whose features changed overnight.

Mud mixed with tears and memories In the temporary refugee camps, where mud blends with tears and memories, someone clutches the edges of his worn-out tent trying to repair it, as if restoring the last piece of his dignity. In the background echoes a painful question: How did those who once watched the news become those who now echo every headline?

And yet, a thin thread of light weaves through all this darkness—an insistence on surviving, on protecting what little remains of their humanity, of a lost warmth they try to revive in cups of tea still boiling over a simple burner, just as they used to in their homes before tents became their shelter.

This is Gaza in its harsh winter—faces exhausted by pain, yet refusing to bow.