Gaza – Nesma Hassan
In a small tent near the eastern border of Rafah, 38-year-old Um Khaled sits on a worn-out piece of foam, holding her young child’s hand to calm him. In her other hand, she clutches a piece of cardboard covered with handwritten letters of the alphabet. She speaks in a quiet but steady voice:
“I’m not a teacher, but I have to teach my kids and others. The war took their school, but it didn’t take away their right to learn.”
Without waiting for an international organization or a local initiative, Um Khaled sectioned off part of her worn-out tent to set up a “mini classroom.” Every day, more than a dozen children come to learn reading, writing, and basic math. Lessons are taught with cardboard and a charcoal stick; the blackboard is a scrap of wood salvaged from the rubble.
With a sad smile, she adds: “A child doesn’t just need food — he needs to feel there’s still something called life.”
The Wood-Fired Oven… From Ashes to Bread
In a newly-established camp north of Khan Younis, we meet 41-year-old Um Hossam, who brought an old electric oven back to life after finding it buried beneath the ruins of her home in Beit Hanoun. Having lost her kitchen, her gas, and all her utensils, she refused to give up:
“I pulled it from under the rubble, washed it with dirt and water, placed it on a stone base… and started using it with firewood.”
Lighting the fire and finding wood was no easy task, but she used dead tree branches and damp cardboard soaked in a homemade sanitizer made from alcohol, salt, and dried lemon — a fuel that helped her ignite the flames, “We baked bread in it, cooked lentils and bulgur, and even started feeding the neighbors… The whole neighborhood waits for the days I light the oven.”
A Lentil-Pasta Meal… and a Flour Alternative
In Deir al-Balah, 29-year-old Salwa, a mother of three, sits on a stone near her tent, grinding dry pasta using a traditional hand mill her husband retrieved from his grandfather’s demolished home.
“The flour ran out in the first month… We only had some dry pasta left, so we ground it and made bread from it. It turned out hard, but it’s filling.”
She also came up with a substitute for dukkah — a staple poor man’s meal in Gaza — using crushed lentils, pepper, a bit of salt, and bulgur stored before the war.
“The kids started to like the taste… We have no oil, no sumac, but we try to give them a sense they’re not deprived of everything.”
Lighting Fires with Ingenuity
22-year-old Maysoun, a university student whose graduation was cut short by the war, created a simple mixture from materials available in the camp to use as both sanitizer and fire starter:
“I mixed alcohol with orange peels and other things we could find. I started distributing it to neighbors because charcoal and gas are gone, and lighting a fire has become a problem.”
Her invention has been widely adopted, with some women now using it for cooking and heating as well. She isn’t looking for payment — only for the feeling that she can still be useful.
Women Under Fire… Hands That Keep Life Going
These stories aren’t fiction — they are born from tents and rubble. Women who have lost almost everything, yet have not lost their resourcefulness, their hope, or their ability to “invent” from nothing.
As Um Khaled says, looking at the children gathered around her:
“We’re not just enduring… we’re creating ways to live. The war wants to kill everything in us, but we resist it in every way — even with cardboard.”
From Gaza, where ashes turn into opportunities and pain becomes fuel, women prove each day that they are the backbone of survival and the strongest imprint in a battle with no end.
