Gaza; Ramadan Revolved Around My Grandma.
Bombs Took Her House. Famine Took Her Life.
Israel’s genocide in Gaza cut off my grandmother’s access to the nutrients and medications she needed to survive.
For decades throughout Gaza, Ramadan had a familiar shared rhythm: the smell of soup rising from kitchens, the sound of plates being set, and children hurrying to the place where everyone would meet. For my family, that place was always my grandma’s house. Now everything feels different. Ramadan still arrives, but something essential is missing.
This is the first Ramadan we’ve observed without my grandmother, Aisha Dmeida; the first Ramadan when we do not go to her house; and the first Ramadan when we do not hear her kind voice minutes before the evening Maghrib prayer, asking, “Did you prepare the dates?” referring to the dates that we consume after sundown to break our daily fast. This is the first Ramadan when her chair is empty because she was martyred during the famine, when medicine became a wish and bread became almost impossible to find.
In our family, Ramadan was never just a month on the calendar. It revolved around my grandmother. Every year, we gathered at her home before sunset. But this year, we gathered without her.
During the 11-day war in May 2021, my grandmother’s house was bombed. After that, she moved in with us for about a year and a half. Sharing daily life under one roof deepened our relationship in ways I had not expected. I came to know her habits and routines: the careful way she folded clothes, the order in which she arranged her belongings. We spent an entire Ramadan together, preparing iftar side by side, breaking our fast together, and waking at the same time for suhoor, the pre-dawn meal eaten before the daily fast of Ramadan begins.
In December 2022, my grandmother moved to a new house in the same neighborhood, but our Ramadan routine remained unchanged. Every day, we went to her home for both iftar dinners and early morning suhoor meals, a habit that was never up for debate and that we all embraced willingly. Each evening, she would wait for us before sunset, as if the day itself would not be complete without our arrival.
Her home was modest: two small rooms and a narrow kitchen filled with the smell of cumin and cardamom. She did not believe in excess. She would say, “Ramadan is about gathering,” not about how full the table is.
Minutes before the call to prayer, she would quietly adjust the cups and spoons while sitting on her bed, and then asked her familiar question: “Did you prepare the dates?” It was never really a question, but her gentle way of announcing that Maghrib was near.
One of the most beautiful moments of Ramadan was the Taraweeh nightly prayer. She prayed while seated on a chair, her body tiring easily, yet she always insisted on praying with us. My father led the prayer as we stood behind him, and afterward, during supplication, the room filled with a deep and steady sense of peace. She whispered “Ameen,” praying for our health, our safety, and the quiet blessings that held us together.
When the prayers ended, the evening softened into dessert time. My mother prepared qatayef, small pancake-like dumplings traditionally served during Ramadan, filled with the nuts and coconut my grandmother loved, and we gathered around her once more, lingering in laughter and conversation, listening as she drifted into stories from the past, sharing how she met my grandfather and the life they built together.
The early morning suhoor meal was quieter, gentler, carrying a kind of peace that existed only in those early hours before dawn. She always woke before everyone else, even before the musaharati, the traditional Ramadan caller who wakes people for suhoor by beating a small drum, his voice echoing through the streets. Long before that, her voice would already be moving through the house, calling each of us by name, softly but firmly.
Sometimes we complained, half-awake and heavy with drowsiness, but she insisted we all sit together, believing that suhoor lost its blessing if eaten alone. She refused to take a single bite until everyone had gathered, filling the silence with old Ramadan songs and verses she had memorized in my grandfather’s time. Even then, in those quiet moments, she always remembered his kindness, speaking his name with tenderness and ending each memory with a prayer for him.
Tea was never absent; it was as essential at suhoor as the meal itself. “There is no suhoor without tea,” she would say, pouring it slowly with her wrinkled, loving hands. Even when the food was modest, tea remained nonnegotiable.
But this year, we woke to the sound of an alarm clock. Not her gentle voice calling our names before dawn. My father woke us, but his voice carried a sadness we had never heard before. We ate suhoor, but it felt incomplete.
Displacement and Longing
When we were displaced to the south of Gaza during the first round of evacuations on November 29, 2023, my grandmother remained in the north. She refused to leave her home despite the danger, hunger, and destruction. Whenever we managed to call, we listened carefully to her breathing, to the strength in her voice. She would say, “I miss you … when are you coming back?” and end each call by praying for our safety. The distance between north and south Gaza felt larger than geography; it carried fear and longing.
On January 27, 2025, when we finally reunited, I went to her first. Before visiting anyone else, I hugged her tightly, trying to press months of absence into one embrace. I brought her nuts and namoura, her favorite sweet, a traditional Middle Eastern sweet made from semolina, soaked in syrup, and topped with nuts. I did not know the war would return more fiercely. I did not know that this would be one of our last memories together.
The Famine
The famine did not arrive in a single moment; it came gradually. Flour became scarce, bread lines stretched longer each day, and medicine slowly vanished from pharmacy shelves. My grandmother had depended on regular daily medicine for years, and when it was no longer available, we searched desperately for alternatives. Each time, the answer was the same: “There is none,” or “Wait until the end of the month.” But illness does not wait — especially during times when access to nourishment is scarce to nonexistent. She was taking medication for blood pressure. She was supposed to only eat healthy foods and was not supposed to consume canned food. While we would eat lentil bread, she, as a patient, could not tolerate that. Her body grew weaker, her weight dropped, and her voice softened until it was a whisper.
On August 5, 2025, my grandmother died at the height of the famine, a period that was harsh and unforgiving. During that time, as the first method of bringing food in during the famine, young men from Gaza went to the Israeli kibbutz called Zikim, risking their lives to try to get flour from humanitarian aid packages, or any food to stave off hunger. Some were shot at by Israeli forces while there, and many returned without flour, while only a few managed to bring back flour or other food. They could not buy it because the prices were extremely high. During the famine, another way aid was delivered was through air drops. Aid was dropped from the sky in ways that felt more like bombs falling among starving people, in a system that turned survival into humiliation for the people of Gaza.
When the world discusses famine, it often speaks in numbers: rates of malnutrition among children, women, and the elderly; the number of displaced families. But for us, famine is a familiar chair left empty this year, and every year, and a question that will never be asked again: “Did you prepare the dates?”
Famine is described as a crisis. But for us, it is also an absence, one that arrives every evening at sunset, sits quietly at the table, and visits us again at suhoor. Famine does not only take away food; sometimes, it takes the heart of the table.