ABC | Allyson Horn in Jerusalem and ABC staff in Gaza | 21 January 2024

Hiba Abu Sadeq is like many other pre-teens. The 12-year-old loves her friends, learning at school and fashion. But now she doesn’t know if her friends are dead or alive, there is no school, and she has worn the same clothes for weeks. The young girl has had her way of life ripped apart by the Israel-Gaza war.

“Our life is all upside down,” she says. “At my age, I am supposed to be playing. But now there is no-one to play with. We had a beautiful life. I want to go back to my home and break free from this lifestyle.”

Hiba used to live in a modern tower complex in Gaza’s southern city of Khan Younis. But last month she had to run after neighbours in the complex received a phone call from the Israeli army that the homes were about to be bombed. She and her family escaped and then watched as their home was destroyed by an Israeli air strike.

“They brought down our building with two missiles,” she says. “The missiles were over my head. Then I fell. People we know died.”

‘Even for death, you wait in line’

Hiba now lives in a tent-like shelter, along with her seven siblings and mother and father, in the Gaza border area of Rafah. Every day when she wakes up, instead of going to school, she must fight to survive. There is no breakfast and she’s sent by her mother to find water. She carries big plastic bottles for hundreds of metres searching for a tap that is connected to the water supplied by aid agencies.

If she doesn’t hurry, the water will run out for the day. She arrives at a long line and places the bottles on the ground. Then she waits. “We have to queue for a long time, but we don’t have much choice,” she says. She waits for hours for her turn. “I am very tired because every day I go to fill the bottles. All our days are about finding water,” she says. “There is a queue for everything now. Water, falafel, even for death, you wait in line.”

As Hiba lugs the bottles back to camp, the sounds of Israeli drones fill the sky. She looks up to search for their location. “I am scared,” she says. “When I hear the drone, it sounds so close, like it is right next to us.”

Reminders of death are everywhere in Gaza. Walking past a demolished building, Hiba stops, picking up a pair of ruined shoes. “Look at the destruction. Oh God,” she says. “Look at the rubble, look at it. They recovered four bodies out of this rubble. They destroyed everything they could. They left nothing. What can we do?”

‘I was so hungry’ 

Back at the crowded tent camp, where thousands of other Gazans have taken refuge, Hiba’s mother is preparing some flat bread, using the family’s last remaining flour. It’s the first meal Hiba will have eaten in 24 hours. “We eat once a day, we don’t eat breakfast nor dinner,” she says.

Hiba puts small plastic bottles on the fire to keep it burning while her mother cooks the bread and some chopped tomatoes. When it’s ready, she eats slowly, savouring every bite of one piece of flatbread. “The tomato is so tasty, I was so hungry,” she says.

Forty per cent of Gazans are at catastrophic risk of famine, according to the United Nations (UN). Hiba is among them. She has giant black circles hollowed underneath her eyes — a sign of malnutrition. The family has now used its last flour, and Hiba goes searching for more food. Shelves have been stripped bare in the few shops that remain open. “There is no baking powder, no sugar, no salt, no tomato sauce, there is nothing at all,” she says. “How are we going to survive without anything to eat?”

‘I play with the wind’

Hiba misses her old life. “I wish I could go [home] to see my friends and check if they are alive or not,” she says. “My best friend is Shahed. Shahed, Hanane and Lynn, Mayar and Ritaj. I used to play with them. [Now] I play with the wind,” she says as she picks up a rock and throws it in the dirt, jumping a game of hopscotch alone.

Inside the camp where Hiba and her family live, sanitation conditions are appalling. There are no toilets or showers. Hiba has to walk to find a toilet. The UN estimates there is one toilet for every 400 people in Gaza. Most people use the outdoors. She’s embarrassed that she has no privacy. “We need some intimacy,” she says.

Hiba also can’t keep herself clean or wash her clothes. “I take a shower once a month. In 15 days, I only took one shower,” she says. But, like most pre-teens, it’s important for Hiba to look pretty. So, she brushes her greasy hair, holding up her phone camera so she can see her reflection. Then she gets ready for bed.

‘I want to go back home’

She and her siblings sleep together on thin foam mattresses laid on the sand and try to stay warm under a blanket. Temperatures in Gaza at night can dip below 10 degrees Celsius. “We are cold at night,” she says. “We sleep on the sand and all the insects attack us. I was bitten by an insect,” she says, clutching the side of her torso. “It hurts a lot. At night, I often wake up as it feels like it is burning me.”

When darkness sets, Hiba lays on the mattress and listens for more Israeli air strikes. Sleep is not peaceful or restful, but she dreams of a better future. “I want to go back home, I want the war to stop and to have a ceasefire,” she says. “I want to stay in my house. I want to see my friends and to build everything again.”