{:author "Nourhan Mousa",
 :date "2026-08-27",
 :description
 "Some of the hardest days we have ever endured were the days of starvation.",
 :image nil,
 :inferred-meta true,
 :tags ["Family" "Hunger"],
 :title "The days of starvation"}

Some of the hardest days we have ever endured were the days of starvation.

It was an unimaginably brutal time. We didn't have a single crumb of bread. Flour became a rare luxury; a single 25-kilogram bag skyrocketed to an astronomical $1,000—an amount that would only sustain my family for a single week. Hunger consumed us. Desperate for anything to quiet our empty stomachs, we found nothing to eat but tree leaves.

When the so-called "humanitarian aid corridors"—which were nothing but traps of humiliation and death—finally opened, crowds of desperate people would gather, waiting for hours under the scorching sun. Every single day, people were killed or wounded. Driven by sheer starvation, my young children had to go there. Sometimes they would return with a single kilogram of flour; other times, they came back empty-handed, their fragile bodies bruised, bleeding, and torn. The occupation forces opened fire directly at the crowds. My own brother was martyred there, killed while waiting in line just to bring some flour or lentils to his hungry children.

Prices were insane. We went to sleep for consecutive nights without a single bite of food. We were starving. My children were exhausted, crying constantly from the pain of hunger. Our faces grew pale and gaunt, and our bodies wasted away. I lost 18 kilograms. Because my chronic medication was completely unavailable, I suffered from frequent fainting spells and severe drops in blood pressure. With our pale faces and protruding bones, we looked like walking ghosts. We were exhausted, and to this day, we still suffer from the deep physical and psychological scars of this famine.

### The Collapse of Daily Life and Healthcare

Before the war, transportation was excellent and readily available. Now, we are reduced to riding donkey carts, heavily overcrowded with people. It is so unsafe that passengers frequently fall off and get injured.

Accessing medical care has become nearly impossible. Hospitals have been bombed, and a massive number of doctors and medical staff have been martyred. The remaining medical personnel are stretched dangerously thin, utterly unable to handle the overwhelming volume of patients. There is a catastrophic shortage of medicine because the occupation blocks medical supplies from entering.

When we do seek treatment, it is usually in makeshift medical points set up in tents. Thousands of patients wait for hours, sitting on the bare ground under the burning sun. A sick person goes in search of healing, only to return in worse pain, thoroughly exhausted to the point of collapse by the journey, the waiting, and the heat. In the end, you are usually told that your medicine is out of stock, or that a substitute exists in an outside pharmacy at a price no one can afford.

### We are withering away, dying a slow death.

There is no healthcare, no education, no food, no clean water, no usable roads, no proper transportation, and absolutely no source of income to sustain a dignified life.
