I have spoken about what is happening in Gaza all around the world, and I will continue to do so, despite facing countless threats, intimidation, and blackmail, writes Ahmed Alnaouq. [GETTY]
It was exactly this time last year that I sent my usual message to my family on our WhatsApp group asking if they were all okay. I had no idea this would be my last message to them. Until today, no one has responded.
It has been a year since Israel dropped a bomb on my family home, murdering 21 of my closest relatives: my father, two brothers, three sisters, 14 nieces and nephews, and my cousin.
Writing this, for the first time, I have dared to look back at our conversations in the weeks before the unthinkable happened – scrolling through the WhatsApp chats with my siblings, listening to the voice notes, reading the text messages, even casting my eyes over the photos we once shared with each other.
During their final moments last year, my family members were crowded together in my father’s house – where we were all raised. This was normal for us. Even after my sisters had married and moved out with their husbands, they would always return during times of war. My father’s house was, we always believed, our refuge, our escape, our safety, our shelter.
As I look back at those conversations, I think about how I never let myself believe they could be my final interaction with them.
The last time I exchanged messages with my brother Mohammed was on 2 October. He sent me some photos of his flat, which was on the top floor of our family home. He was finally fixing the roof that used to leak water on him and his children during the winter. He was happy – fixing his house.
I then open the chat I’d had with my younger brother Mahmoud, who was only 25 when he was killed, also on 2 October. He was asking me about the IELTS English language exam because he had just won a scholarship from Australia and it was a requirement to apply to the university. I told him it was an easy exam and that he would pass it no problem. But he was nervous. He wanted to travel so badly, he told me this opportunity was his dream come true, and the exam was the only box left to tick.
I continue scrolling through the exchange, and see pictures he sent me of flowers and gifts he once bought for my fiancée. He told me, jokingly, he was practising buying flowers so he would be an expert when the time came to buy them for his future wife. Mahmoud was a hardworking young man. He used to juggle two/three jobs at once, spending most of his time in his rented office space in Gaza City, doing translation work, writing project proposals, and applying for scholarships. He was so full of life.
Next, I open the chat I had with my sister Walaa. Despite Walaa being the last person I spoke to before the bombing, the last time we interacted on WhatsApp was 2 July. She told me she had just visited my fiancée in her home and had a wonderful time, and that I was lucky to have Yumna as my soon-to-be wife. Walaa, who was 36 years old, was our genius—the smartest in the family. She graduated in computer engineering but could only find work as an IT teacher at a school.
As I scroll further through our conversation, I see her messages announcing good news: she had just moved into a new house with her husband and four children. She sent me pictures of their new home—which was small but lovely. Walaa and her four children were killed following Israel’s strike on our home.
I proceeded to open the chat I had with my sister Alaa, Mohammed’s twin. It was empty because Alaa was always busy and didn’t have much time to send messages. But there were several calls, and the last we had was on 5 October, which I remember well. I had just arrived in Istanbul for a vacation with my fiancée. Alaa called to tell me how happy she was to see our photos together. In the background, I could hear her children fighting, which was annoying her. I asked what was happening and she replied: “All of them are fighting over who gets to call you first.” She said her children saw me as a role model. After that, I called each of them individually—Eslam, 13, Dima, 12, Tala, 10. Her other two children were too young to remember me well since I left Gaza five years prior.
Alaa and her five children were also killed by the bomb Israel dropped on our home.
I also looked over the exchanges I’d had with my other sister Aya. The last conversation we had was on 25 August. I got a new job in London and was paid that day, so I organised a beach outing for my family and bought them some nice food. Aya was thanking me for organising it from afar, telling me how tasty the food was. Yumna had also joined my family on the outing. Aya told me she had fun.
I scroll further up in the chat, Aya had announced to me that she landed herself a new job as an accountant. She was so happy. Aya was also very intelligent. She had two university degrees—one in information technology and another in accounting. She graduated first, not only in her class but in the entire department of trade and accounting. Her GPA score was 94.9%. Incredible. Yet, she too only managed to find a job a few months before our last chat.
Aya, along with her three children were all wiped out by the same Israeli bomb.
Finally, I thought back the last phone call I had with my family during the war. I called my brother Mohammed and asked him to pass the phone to my father. My father was my weak spot. Even before the war, it always brought a tear to my eye when I thought about him and realised how far away I was. The prospect of losing him while I was away had haunted me for years. I had already lost my mother after I left for the UK, and I couldn’t bear the thought of losing my father the same way. In that call, I asked him how he was feeling. He repeated his usual words: “We are resilient, we will stand tall, we will never be broken, no matter what happens.”
My father was fearless and powerful. It seemed to me that nothing in the world could destroy him.
As I wrote this piece, I felt the need to ring my brother-in-law Yousef, Aya’s husband. Since that fateful day, I couldn’t bring myself to call him, we had only sent each other text messages. It would have made everything more real. But, I thought that maybe it was time for me to hear his story, hear his voice recounting it – and face my own pain.
He answered my call and began to tell me: “On that ominous day, my life was destroyed forever. It was only a few days earlier that Israel bombed a mosque near where I live. My house was partially destroyed. So I asked Aya to leave with the kids, to seek shelter at her father’s house. I thought it was a safe area.”
His voice started to break, and I could tell he was holding back tears. He continued: “On Saturday, I called Aya again, asking her to come back home. We had a meal with our children in the garden. Then I told her to return to your father’s home. It’s safer there. I never knew that would be the last time I’d see her. The next day, I had to collect the small pieces of my wife’s body and our children. They were torn up beyond recognition.”
Yousef has been moving from one tent to another over the past year, in a state of complete devastation. One of his children, Malak, initially survived but passed away a week later from her injuries. He told me that watching his only surviving daughter die shattered him into a million pieces. “She told me she was dying. For over a week, she told me she would die, and I couldn’t help her.”
Little Malak, only 12 when she died, said to her father that Aya had told them from the first day of the war that, “We’re all going to die. So let’s enjoy the last moments of our life.”
Today marks the anniversary of the day Israel killed most of my family. I am deeply hurt, but unbroken. I know this trauma is everlasting, that it may well be passed on to my children. But this pain is also a force that will empower me for the rest of my life.
For the past year, I have suffered vivid nightmares every single night, which have robbed me of even the briefest moment of peace. In the days, I battle overwhelming sorrow and ever-present dark thoughts. Yet, at times I feel a strange sense of relief that my family was taken from me early on, in the initial days of the genocide. They did not have to live through the starvation, terror and violence of the past month, only to then be executed by Israel like so many of my people in Gaza.
This trauma is not new to me. Ten years ago, Israel killed one of my family members for the first time, my older brother Ayman. I was just 19 years old at the time, and his death shattered me. It filled me with hatred for my own life and made me wish for my death every single day. Back then, losing one family member had crushed me, but when I lost so many more last year, something changed within me. Instead of breaking me, it made me a hundred times stronger.
Since the day tragedy struck on 22 October 2023, I have been working relentlessly—no weekends, no holidays—amplifying the voices of Palestinians and speaking truth to power. I have spoken about what is happening in Gaza all around the world, and I will continue to do so, despite facing countless threats, intimidation, and blackmail.
Israel may have thought that killing my family would silence me, that it would break me like it did when my brother was killed. But they could not have anticipated that this would give my life a new purpose. More than ever, my life now has meaning, a clear and determined goal: to empower Palestinian voices and put them at the centre of the world stage.
Israel thought they could bury my family, but they didn’t realise they were seeds.
They were: My father Nasri Alnaouq 75. My sister Walaa 36, and her children Raghd 13, Eslam 12, Sara 9, Abdullah 6. My brother, Muhammad 35, with his children Bakr 11, and Basema 9. My sister Alaa 35, and her children Eslam 13, Dima 12, Tala 8, Noor 4, and Nasmah 2. My sister Aya 33, and her children Malak Bashir 12, Mohammed Bashir 9, and Tamim Bashir 6. My brother Mahmoud Alnaouq 25, and my cousin Ali alqurinwi 35.
These seeds are now growing and blossoming into new life that cannot be cut down.
Ahmed Alnaouq is the founder of We Are Not Numbers. He has a Master’s degree in international journalism from Leeds University. He is also cofounder of Across the Wall, a media project that tells stories from Gaza in Hebrew, and serves as advocacy and outreach officer for the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor.
Follow him on Twitter: @AlnaouqA
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