\n<\/p>\n
Before the war, Ahmed, 39, had a busy life. He was pursuing a PhD in factchecking and had three jobs: as a radio presenter, editor of a local factchecking website and researcher at an academic centre. He says he felt \u201chappy\u201d to be able to provide for his family while being intellectually stimulated.<\/p>\n
But the war \u201cblew our lives apart completely\u201d, Ahmed says. Where previously he would spend hours lost in research, now he spends hours standing in line to fill water jugs or use the bathroom.<\/p>\n
He says war changed his sense of self and that he no longer \u201cfeels the pillar of his family\u201d, adding: \u201cAs a man, I derived my appreciation for myself from my accomplishments in my work and my studies.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/span>Ahmed says he tries to reassure his children but wonders what new hardships the war will bring. <\/span> Photograph: Abd Abo Riash\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Ahmed had been living alongside his parents and siblings in the same building, each of his siblings with their family in a separate flat. In May 2024, they were all forced to evacuate their homes and have lived in tents ever since. He has found the lack of privacy in his new life hard and says it has created \u201cemotional silence\u201d between couples.<\/p>\n \u201cBefore, the home was a private kingdom, a place to decompress at the end of the day, to speak freely. Now life is communal and there\u2019s no privacy. A man can\u2019t express his emotions to his wife as he used to. Everyone can hear; they can\u2019t discuss and work through issues as they used to.\u201d<\/p>\n As a husband and father, he says he feels a responsibility to be a source of reassurance for his family. \u201cI have children who don\u2019t know what walls are, what a bed is, what stairs are.\u201d He says he tries to make them feel that \u201ceverything will be OK\u201d, but privately wonders what new hardships the war will bring and often lapses into silence. \u201cThat is the price of manhood in the catastrophe of this war.\u201d<\/p>\n Back in 2023, Nidal, 40, says he ran a small business out of a storage room in his block of flats in Gaza City, selling mobile phones and home appliances on credit. He used to spend his days going from door to door collecting payments. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t just work. I got to know people and had lots of friends and acquaintances. My life was good. We had everything we needed,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n <\/span>Nidal says he feels less calm and more angry now. He spends most of his time by his tent, not speaking to anyone. <\/span> Photograph: Abd Abo Riash\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Both Nidal and his extended family, who lived in the same block, were soon displaced after an Israeli missile strike that killed his sister-in-law. In a further tragedy, his daughter Malek was killed after a second airstrike on a school where they were staying.<\/p>\n Nidal and the remaining members of his family eventually returned to the rubble of their home and erected a tent. The collapsed roof of the block of flats offers them some shade and shelter from the rain. But Nidal says he feels no hope of rebuilding his life properly again and spends most of his days by the tent, rarely speaking to anyone. \u201cThe war took away everything \u2013 my child, my house, my money.\u201d<\/p>\n He says he feels a different person now, less calm and more angry. He feels embarrassed to ask his clients for money they owe him, given the loss everyone has suffered, and is sad most of the time.<\/p>\n <\/span>Nidal says he has been rendered helpless in his ability to provide for his family.<\/span> Photograph: Abd Abo Riash\/The Guardian<\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t stand anyone and can\u2019t even stand myself. I don\u2019t even want to call myself an unemployed man \u2013 I am a man rendered helpless. Not helpless physically, but helpless in my ability to provide for my family. I secure for them the bare minimum that keeps them alive.<\/p>\n \u201cMay God spare every man from this: the breaking of a father before the eyes of his children.\u201d<\/p>\n Before the war, Hussein, 24, had his own flat, was a technology student at university and ran workshops on AI. His life had a daily routine to it and he was thinking about finding a partner and getting married. Early on in the conflict, however, his home was bombed, injuring his father and leaving his sister-in-law in hospital for six months.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotionFree newsletter | Every fortnight<\/p>\n Sign up to Global Dispatch<\/span><\/p>\n Get a different world view with a roundup of the best news, features, opinion and photography, curated by our global development team<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n <\/span>Hussein wanted to work in digital forensics and cybersecurity, but the war has changed everything for him.<\/span> Photograph: Abd Abo Riash\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Hussein says he \u201cstarted from zero \u2026 there was no food, no work, nothing\u201d. To survive, he turned to whatever work he could find, beginning by charging and repairing phones before moving on to buying and selling them and providing technical support. He is proud that he managed to adapt and make money so soon after losing his family\u2019s home, he says.<\/p>\n \u201cI was very, very, very ashamed of myself at first. The war changed everything, even my future.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>Hussein has had to start again from nothing after his home was bombed.<\/span> Photograph: Abd Abo Riash\/The Guardian<\/p>\n He cannot imagine bringing a future wife into the tent where he now lives, \u201cit\u2019s not logical\u201d, and says he must at least provide a home with privacy and running water. But he still hopes to marry and have children. \u201cIt [the war] has affected me and all young people. We have to repopulate this land and rebuild it. It\u2019s us, the young people, who will fix it, restore it, make it even more beautiful than it was before.\u201d<\/p>\n Hamza, 22, was a second-year medical student when the war began, spending most of his time at his desk at home in Jabaliya in the north of Gaza. But he soon found himself volunteering as an emergency frontline doctor after refusing to follow Israeli evacuation orders to move south.<\/p>\n <\/span>Hamza, pictured in the cloister of Milan University, says the war helped him realise the importance of family and friends.<\/span> Photograph: Marta Clinco\/The Guardian<\/p>\n There were countless patients with head injuries and only three neurosurgeons in the north. Working gave him purpose, he says. \u201cIt was an impossible mission for a student like me to work at the hospital and do the work I did. I consider myself a hero, to be honest.\u201d<\/p>\n Hamza says war has changed his perspective on family and friends. He does not let his studying isolate him any more. \u201cYou always have to sacrifice something for something. The war changed all of that \u2026 and that is something I am grateful for.\u201d<\/p>\n He says he has been drawn closer to his family. \u201cWe love each other more, respect each other more. We slept on the same mattress, sometimes in a space of two square metres. We were hungry together, we almost died together. We weren\u2019t like this before the war. We became very tight-knit.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>Hamza\u2019s parents remain in Gaza.<\/span> Photograph: Marta Clinco\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Before the war, Hamza says he had put off thinking about marriage to focus on a plan to study neurosurgery overseas and be able to provide his future wife with a good life, a nice home and a car. But war and the death of family members has changed that, he says, and he now plans to start a family sooner.<\/p>\n \u201cIn war, when a person feels extinction, they are drawn to reproduce. God has made us this way. We have lost so much; there\u2019s a feeling that we want to compensate.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ahmed: \u2018The lack of privacy has created an emotional silence\u2019 Before the war, Ahmed, 39, had a busy life. He was pursuing a PhD in factchecking and had three jobs: as a radio presenter, editor of a local factchecking website and researcher at an academic centre. He says he felt \u201chappy\u201d to be able to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":52226,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[1442,681,1233,37,671,2164,859,96,1329,1031,2062,261],"class_list":{"0":"post-52225","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-changed","9":"tag-child","10":"tag-gaza","11":"tag-health","12":"tag-house","13":"tag-israels","14":"tag-ive","15":"tag-lost","16":"tag-men","17":"tag-mental","18":"tag-money","19":"tag-war"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=52225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52225\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/52226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=52225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=52225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=52225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Nidal: \u2018I can\u2019t stand anyone, even myself\u2019<\/h2>\n
Hussein: \u2018I was very, very, very ashamed at first\u2019<\/h2>\n
Hamza: \u2018When a person feels extinction, they are drawn to reproduce\u2019<\/h2>\n