Eid al-Adha in Gaza is one of my most cherished memories. We would wake up before sunrise, the air still cool and full of anticipation. My siblings and I, still in our pyjamas, would hug each other, rubbing sleep from our eyes as we got ready for the mosque.

My mother would already be up, laying out new plates and cups, wiping down the furniture, preparing the house for the flood of guests she knew would come.

Outside, the streets would begin to hum — children laughing as they played with the sheep, neighbours calling out “Eid Mubarak” from balconies, shopkeepers putting out sweets and fresh bread.

There was a sense of joy that felt contagious, unstoppable, even in a place that knew so much sorrow.

In the years before the genocide, when I could no longer be there in person, I still took part in Eid. I’d call my family from London and ask if they were planning to sacrifice a sheep that year, and who they’d visit first. 

There was always gossip — who had fallen out with whom, and whether they’d finally make amends over a plate of maqluba and bitter Arabic coffee. I’d send money to help buy the sheep, feeling both distant and connected — as if wiring love through Western Union. Even from afar, Eid still felt like a time when Gaza could hold itself together.

Families stitched old wounds, children burst with excitement, and faith wrapped everything in a sense of quiet dignity.

From celebration to survival

But this year, there are no sheep. No new plates. No visits or reconciliation. This year, Eid in Gaza is marked by hunger, tents, and graveyards. My family isn’t discussing who to visit — they’re searching for clean water and a bit of bread. They are not debating which sheep to sacrifice, because they are the ones being sacrificed. 

My sister told me that the Sheikh Radwan Market — once a bustling heart of Gaza City, where she took her children every Eid to buy sweets and new clothes — has become a makeshift displacement camp. In the heart of Gaza City, garbage rots in the summer heat. Children cry for food. There are no decorations. No sweets. No sheep.

My other sister and her husband, who never spent an Eid without preparing a lamb feast and feeding the needy, are now the needy — their home and livelihood destroyed, their dignity stolen. They live in a tent and run after scraps of bread and water.

Last Eid al-Fitr, my father prayed in front of the ruins of his demolished mosque. This Eid, he cannot even do that — he has been displaced from his neighbourhood altogether. Still, he refuses to let the tradition die. He arranged with neighbours to gather outside one of the tents to pray together, trying to salvage some small sense of Eid, some thread of normality in the chaos.

The last thing they can’t take

And yet, somehow, faith survives. In the ruins, they still say “Eid Mubarak”. My mother, displaced and grieving, still whispers morning prayers. My nieces and nephews, barefoot and thin, still put on whatever clean clothes they can find, as if honouring the ritual might bring a fragment of normal life back.

There’s nothing left to celebrate, but they cling to faith not because they expect a miracle, but because it is the last thing that hasn’t been taken from them.

In a world that has stripped them of safety, food, and even the right to mourn, faith becomes an act of quiet defiance. A way of saying: we are still here.

I read a report that quoted a young father of four, Hussam Abu Amer, 37 sitting on the scorched tiles of what used to be his living room in Gaza City: “I used to be a man who provided, who protected. Now, I’m just someone who tells bedtime stories to distract his kids from the sound of bombs and the feeling of hunger.”

His words echo across tents and ruins — a father’s quiet desperation in a place where celebration has turned into survival.

And that’s what it’s come down to. After months of relentless bombardment, displacement, and starvation, what remains of Gaza’s population isn’t asking for celebration — it’s just survival.

So no, in Gaza they don’t know it’s Eid — not in the way the rest of the world does. They don’t wake to laughter, sweets, or new clothes. They wake to silence, to smoke, to loss. But they still mark the day. In whispered prayers, in shared crumbs, in hugs that last a little longer.

In Gaza, Eid is no longer a celebration. It is a remembrance, a prayer for the living and the dead. And it is a quiet, stubborn declaration: that even beneath the weight of genocide, the human spirit, and the rituals of love and faith, endure.

Because in Gaza today, people are not hoping for decoration, or celebration, or lamb feasts. They are hoping for something far more basic, far more urgent. They are praying for a ceasefire. They just want the killing to stop.