I was an orphan… and my father was alive
My story began in exile. I was born in a forced exile in Jordan, where my mother, my siblings, and I were alone, while my father had left us to live in Egypt, where he formed another family and married three women besides my mother. My childhood was without a father and without tenderness. His absence was so painful that my siblings and I would send him messages, begging him to return, but he left a scar in my heart that does not heal.
From exile to the camp
After years of waiting, my mother realised that my father would not return, so she filed for divorce in absentia, and we returned to Palestine to settle in New Askar Camp. We later learned that my father had died, but his death added nothing new to my life, for his absence while he was alive had been more painful. My mother thought that returning would mark stability, but reality was harsher; she enrolled me in a boarding school, where I lived a struggle that ended with my decision to return home.
In my grandfather’s house, our life was difficult and governed by need; we had no provider and depended on my uncles or relief organisations. I was a child living on “waiting”. My mother was unable to work, so she suffered in silence, but I felt her loneliness and fear. Our lives were besieged by the decisions of others: no going out, no making decisions, no speaking. I grew up afraid to laugh out loud, preferring darkness and solitude, always asking: why was this fate written for us?
A life on the margins
In secondary school, university was an impossible dream. Seeking an escape, I saw marriage as my only door to freedom. I married at seventeen, but the life I imagined was a single room in my husband’s family home, filled with hard labour and interference. It took three years before we built our own space. Those two rooms were my first taste of independence; only then did my marriage begin to breathe.
From breaking to rising
The news of my brother’s martyrdom came and turned my world into hell. He was my support and my tenderness, the closest person to my heart. His departure was not merely the loss of a person; it was the loss of safety and a breaking I never expected. I entered a shock that lasted a full year, living as a body without a soul, neglecting my home and my children, until I realised that I would pass my grief and brokenness on to them. That was the thread that pushed me to change. A relative encouraged me to join psychosocial support sessions, and although I hesitated at first, I discovered myself there. I learned that grief is not an identity, and that I have the right to say “no” and to choose what suits me.
Today, I am no longer the woman who cries in the dark, but a woman who works, supports her home, and trusts herself. I have transformed the void left by my father’s absence into a space for growth, and I will not allow anyone to steal my laughter again.
My message to every woman like me:
Do not waste your life in sorrow behind walls. Go out, learn, and take your chance in life. Pain will not leave on its own, but you are capable of changing it and shaping your life anew. You are stronger than you think, so do not wait for someone to tell you that—discover it for yourself.