Can we be refugees in our own land?

Can we be refugees in our own land?

This question has echoed in my mind for over twenty-five years. The answer isn’t simple yes or no; it’s something deeper, something lived rather than defined.
Ever since I was a child, UNRWA (United Nation Relief and Work Agency) centers filled our neighborhoods in Gaza: education, health, even food assistance. But before you could access any of these services, you had to answer one question: Are you citizen or a refugee?
I didn’t understand the question, or the difference. I heard my parents say “refugee”, so I repeated it, not knowing what it meant.
At school, they asked me, “Where is your village?” I answered “Al-Sawafir Al-Shamaliyya” (Northern Sawafir), because that’s what I was taught. But I lived in Gaza, I felt I belonged there, so how could I be a refugee?

At twenty-six, I understood: we were displaced. From city to city, from house to tent, from privacy to shared survival. We were displaced within our own homeland, living every detail of displacement, bitter food, bitter cold and hot, bitter estrangement in the place that was supposed to be ours.

At twenty-seven, I understood what it meant to be a refugee. It’s similar to displacement deepens when you become a stranger in a land that doesn’t resemble your own, or even in one that does.
From estrangement in the homeland to estrangement from the homeland, I tasted bitterness in stages.

I decided to leave behind everything that reminded me of the genocide: clothes, food, even photos.
But in London, I found myself longing for the bread of war.
How could something I rejected become a refuge?
How could a taste bring me back to myself?
This blog post isn’t just about bread. It’s about estrangement, identity, and the memory that follows us, even when we think we’ve left it behind.

 
Figure (1,2): War Bread, known as “Saj”, being baked over open fire.

Estrangement didn’t begin with me, or with my parents.
It began long before I was born, even before my grandparents were.
This story isn’t just twenty-five years old, or tied to a single war. It began in 1917, when the British Mandate over Palestine was declared.
Back then, people lived simply. Everyone had their work, their land, their rhythm.
But the mandate wasn’t just administration, it was the start of fragmentation, of promises, of colonial designs.

Then came 1948.
The occupation arrived, and with it came forced displacement.
My grandparents were expelled from their village Al-Sawafir Al-Shamaliyya, a small and near Gaza.
It didn’t take long. Within an hour, everything was destroyed.
Those who survived, survived.
The land was taken. The olive trees. The quiet. The belonging.
From that moment on, we were called refugees.
Refugees in our own land.
UNRWA came, and with it came the label.
Schools, clinics, centers; all tied to the word “refugee.”

When I registered for school for the first time, they asked me: “Are you a refugee or a citizen?”
I didn’t understand the question.
I said “citizen,” because I was born in Gaza, raised in Gaza, and my parents were too.
But my parents said: “You are a refugee.”
I didn’t grow up with my grandparents, they were displaced to Egypt, so I never heard their stories firsthand.
But my parents told me: “ You are originally from Al-Sawafir.”
A small village, close to Gaza. Very close.
A rural place, full of livestock and crops, where everyone knew each other and cared for each other.
As a child, I was lost between two truths:
The truth that my grandparents were expelled from their village,
And the truth that I lived in Gaza and felt I belonged there.
I didn’t yet understand that trauma they lived through had passed down to my parents, and from them to me.
Inside me, something kept searching for its origin.
Maybe my love for green spaces and rural quiet is part of that inheritance.
With every year, I uncovered a new layer of truth.
I learned that displacement means being forced to move within your country.
And refugeehood means being forced to leave your country entirely.
But the question still haunts me:
How can I be a refugee in my own land?

 
Figure (3): Al-Sawafir Al-Shamaliyya before occupation

 

The Truth is always hard, but it must be told.
In 2023, just as life in Gaza had begun to feel slightly more stable, financially, emotionally, even spiritually, the occupation decided to strip us of our breath again.
From the very first day, my family and I were forced to flee.
We didn’t leave Gaza, we fled within it.
We took only the essentials: birth certificates, the deed to our home, a home my mother hadn’t finished paying for.
Thinking we’d be back in two days.
But we never returned.

We fled from Gaza City to Nuseirat (middle area), to my aunt’s house, a thirty-minute drive that could end in safety or in martyrdom.
Thousands were displaced.
Thousands were grieving.
Thousands were still hoping to return.
At the entrance to Nuseirat, people filled the streets, lost, searching.
Schools overflowed with families.
The day tasted like ash.
I volunteered at the hospital.
Every hour brought more wounded, more dead.
The smell of blood and rubble clung to everything.
We ran out of blood units.
Launched donation campaigns.
There were too many missing.
Too many grieving.
Too many unnamed.
One of the hardest moments was hearing that a friend had been killed, and having to stay strong because our third friend couldn’t bear the loss alone.
Three families in every home at least.
If death entered, we had to divide time, so each person could cry.
But time was too short for even a single tear.
We had to fill water tanks while water was still available, because it would disappear in anytime for two days, or maybe a week.
We had to chase the sun to charge solar panels, just to keep our phones alive.
There was no electricity.
No food.
No water.
No gas.
We burned paper, books, and even furniture to cook.
We baked bread, sometime stained with blood.
Bread without yeast, barely bread,
barely enough to quiet hunger.

Then came the red lines.
The occupation marked areas in Gaza and the middle area.
We fled again.
To Rafah
Then, to the sea?
Back to the middle area.
Each move heavier than the last.
No shelter.
We built tents.
But first, we had to find space to place them.
And then?
No crossings.
No food.
No clothes.
No blankets to fight the cold.
We lost ourselves.
Didn’t know where the days were taking us.
What to do.
What we would do.
When it would end.
No one knows.
But we carry hope.
Hope that we will return, even though we’ve forgotten how to return to ourselves.

 
Figure (4): Displacement in Schools                          Figure (5): Displacement

It was time to leave.
After months of waiting, the dreaded day came.
Leaving was never easy.
It was about leaving behind friends, family, neighbours, memories.
We left Gaza.
We left Palestine.
Heavy-hearted.
But we didn’t really leave.
Our bodies crossed borders.
But our hearts stayed.
So many reasons to go.
Just as many to stay.
We held onto hope:
Maybe the war will end before morning.
But it didn’t.

We arrived Egypt.
But safety felt unfamiliar.
We were used to surviving, not living.
Used to checking on loved ones that they’re okay.
We lived in a strange tension:
Are we okay because we survived?
Or are we not okay because we no longer know how to live?
At least we weren’t under the rubble.
We learned to support ourselves, so we could support those still in Gaza.
We tried to send hope.
But the bad news kept coming.
We tried, failed, and tried again.
Overwhelmed, but enduring.

Then I travelled to the UK to study.
There, I felt completely out of place.
No food tasted like ours.
No language sounded like home.
No faces felt familiar.
But I found myself longing for the bread of war.
Flour and water, without yeast.
It didn’t satisfy hunger.
But it brought me back, to my homeland.
Even in its worst days.
Its taste reminded me of warmth.
Of loved ones.
Of the only comfort we had: each other’s arms.
Maybe we don’t know how to return,
But the taste of bread, even when bitter, reminds us that we’re still trying to live.

 
Figure (6): Our Attempt to bake the war bread in London

It's the story of generations who carried their villages in their hearts, their grief in their bones, and their hope in the taste of bread.
It's the story of being named before being understood.
Of being displaced before being born.
Of learning, slowly, that identity is not a label, it’s a layered memory.
We may be scattered,
Renamed.
Told we don’t belong.
But we remember.
And sometimes, memory lives in the simplest things.
In a piece of bread.
In a question.
In the quiet ache of belonging.