When we are able to speak to loved ones in Gaza, they tell us about what “sleep” is like for them. We wait for dawn and call to ask what their night is like. Whoever picks up their phone, or the phone that is charged is the one that is answered. They always sound tired and spent. And our conversations always start like this:

“Last night was terrible, it was worse than the night before. The bombing is like nothing we’ve heard before they’re using new weapons on us. The children sleep from the anxiety, in between us. We don’t really sleep as we guard their bodies with our own. Always ready to run. It is false, the sense of security in running, if the house is bombed the only place we go is to God.”

“We take shifts sleeping. Just in case the bombing gets close we can wake the others to try and escape.”

“From the day we are born until we die, the sound of the drone lives in our ear.”

“We don’t sleep, the bombing keeps us hanging between heaven and earth.”

“When we wake up, and have slept, it's because we haven’t slept in days.”

“Our house is full now, so some of us sleep against the wall sitting up. There aren’t enough mattresses, or blankets. Four people sleep on one mattress, half their bodies on the mattress half on the floor. And we really aren’t sleeping, no one sleeps in Gaza. If we sleep, we also pray that we wake up. One of the children, (two years old) before he sleeps says a prayer with his hands up in the air every night, ‘Ya Allah, let us sleep and wake up, and not die.” But this time it’s different, the bombing does not stop. It’s every two minutes, every two minutes. We wake up all the time, and we are really never asleep.” 

One time on a Whatsapp video with a loved one, she quickly talks to us with rapid breaths after she wakes up, her anxiety is palpable. We hear what sounds like an approaching missile and it is approaching. Her newly awakened eyes quickly fixate to the ceiling and she begins to repeat, “Yama, yama, yama, yama, yama!”

Her voice competes with the sound of the missile as it gets nearer and louder. When it finally hits we wait for the phone which she has dropped now to relay her face back to us. She picks it up. Her eyes were still wildly searching the ceiling. Voices echo around her, “It wasn’t us, it wasn’t us, it is the neighbor’s two houses down.” Several repeat the same lines as they peek through the curtains to see the unfortunate home nestled with its inhabitants in the heart of its ruins.