Sunday 31 December 6am In my culture we have a superstition that says if you get an itch on the bottom of your feet then you will travel soon; an itch on your right hand and you will shake hands with someone important; left hand, you will get money; your nose, you will hear bad news. After another sleepless night, I look at my sister, who was telling me minutes ago how much she misses a good night’s sleep, and I tell her: “I have an itch on the bottom of my feet and on my left hand, do you think I will travel soon and get money?” She says: “I think your body is telling you that you need to take a shower.” We laugh. Hygiene remains a big challenge, especially bathing. Having a bath has become, in the last three months, a luxury few people have. Most of the time we depend on medical alcohol and wet wipes to clean our bodies. Both are very difficult to find and, when you do, they are expensive. A couple of days ago, my sister’s friend invited her to take a bath at her house. They heated some water for her and put it in a bucket – something we never thought any of us would do in our lives. My sister came back happy. But she told me: “I forgot how to take a shower. Has it been this long?” Speaking of hygiene, the list of challenges goes on and on. Laundry, for example. We have been manually cleaning clothes when there is available water. Due to the number of people in the place we are in, there is laundry everywhere: in the normal places like balconies, and in abnormal ones like chairs in the middle of the hallway, or on laundry threads (threads that are hung from one side to the other one) in the bedrooms. I wonder when it will be the turn of our hearts to be cleaned. 7am My sister leaves to visit her friend. Both her cats stand behind the door and start meowing. Do they feel afraid she might not come back? Is it the sadness of loss? It feels like a misery Olympics, with everyone in the group facing their own tragedy Loss has become another companion in our days. We have reached a stage of not sharing our losses with the others because everyone is suffering. Sometimes it feels like a misery Olympics, with everyone in the group facing their own tragedy: someone lost a loved one; someone lost their home; someone lost their dream; and someone lost all three of them. One time, I read a quote from a book called The Five Wounds – I haven’t read the book but I hope to do so one day. It says: “This is death, then: a brief spot of light on earth extinguished, a rippling point of energy swept clear. A kiss, a song, the warm circle of a stranger’s arms – these things and others – the whole crush of memory and hope, the constant babble of the mind, everything that composes a person – gone.” Remembering this quote gave me the freedom to think of the small details I miss about everyone I love. I miss the freckles on the face of our neighbour’s son who had a smile big enough to make your day. I miss my friend and colleague’s loud laughter that used to make our manager come to the office and ask what was happening, and we would feel embarrassed. I miss my other friend’s wonderful sense of style. She would take care of every single detail from head to toe. I wonder how she looks now, but I am sure she is managing to keep in style, even in the worst of times. There are many details that make you who you are. I am not sure – if I make it alive – if I will still possess what makes me, me. And I wonder: will I be there in the future, or will I be someone to be remembered in a diary or over a cup of tea by a friend after I am gone? 10am I go to the tailor to fix a jacket that belongs to a member of our host family. An old man comes in and gives the tailor a pair of boxer shorts. He wants him to make an “inner pocket”. He says: “I am staying in a tent, and I cannot guarantee the safety of any money, no matter how little I have. So I want it to put the money in it.” Next to me is a man who shares his story with all of us: he had a shop in Gaza City but now finds himself displaced with his family, with no money left. “I am trying my best to earn some,” he says. “One day, I go cut some wood to sell for people to burn for cooking and warmth. If we get some flour, I take some of it and make pastries to sell. “Sometimes I and my children take the water gallons of people and go to a far place to fill them, and they will pay us. We have no option. It is about day-to-day survival.” He brought two of his children with him. I ask the first one: “What is your favourite colour?” “White.” “And your favourite food?” His eyes brighten: “Shawarma! I haven’t had shawarma in a very long time.” We talk for a while about all the kinds of food we haven’t had in almost three months, then I ask his younger brother: “What do you want to be in the future?” “I want to be in school.” His father tells me he is supposed to be in the first grade next year; he really wanted the year to pass in order to go with his siblings to school. Then he says: “Now, even the schools are gone.” “And what else do you want to do?” I ask. “I want to draw. In my home, we had a lot of drawing books and pens, pencils and colouring pens. Here we don’t have anything. I want to play with my toys too.” 10pm If it weren’t for someone I met in the street, I wouldn’t have realised that it is the final day of the year. Now, all days are the same – periods of time passing without any meaning, showing us how cheap our lives are. Ahmad was in our room, checking on us, when I had this silly idea. I raised my hands as if I was holding a plate. I told him and my sister I was holding the imaginary cake of the New Year’s Eve celebration, and asked them about their wishes. They gave me a look of “how stupid is this?”, but then Ahmad started, with his very horrible singing voice, singing New Year songs. We sang along for a couple of minutes. He left us, and we went to sleep. That is how my year ended: displaced, sick, sad, unsafe, with the loss of many people, possessions and memories, and terrible mental health. It also ended with some singing and an imaginary cake.