IN HER OWN WORDS: AYESHA’S STORY A DIVORCED MOTHER WITH DISABILITY FIGHTING TO SURVIVE I am Ayesha, a mother of two daughters, and I live with a disability that has always made daily life more challenging. Life here was never easy because of the siege, but before October 7th I still held onto hope. I had a home, food on the table, and dreams I was working hard to achieve. My career, my stability, and my plans collapsed overnight. My husband abandoned me during the war. He married another woman and moved into the house I had built for myself and my daughters. We were cast aside, forced to find shelter elsewhere. When the bombs came and the blockade tightened, food and water vanished. Flour was nowhere to be found, and I often went days without being able to bake a single piece of bread. Gas for cooking was impossible to secure, so I lit wood fires. The smoke irritated my eyes until they burned and became infected, worsening my disability. I tried to hide the pain from my daughters, but they saw me cough and rub my eyes raw just to cook them a small meal. Everyday survival depended on others. My brothers risked their lives at the American aid distribution points. They often came back with only a small bag of food, barely enough for a day. Sometimes they came back empty-handed, sometimes injured. Once my nephew was badly hurt in the chaos. Another time, I received cash through an e-wallet. By the time I withdrew it, half was taken in fees. The little left went to pay rent and buy flour, but it was gone within days. I even sold one of our mattresses. The money lasted less than twenty-four hours. As a mother, I tried to shield my daughters from hunger, skipping meals so they could eat. But I watched their bodies grow thinner, their faces pale. Gaza already had some of the highest rates of anemia among women before this war. Now, it feels like we are trapped in permanent weakness. I wake up dizzy, unable to balance, my body shaking from exhaustion. I see my daughters struggle to focus, their small frames carrying fatigue they should never know at their age. It feels like we live on the edge of fainting or dying every single day. The starvation imposed on us is not an accident. It is designed. For women like me, it is not only hunger that crushes us but also humiliation. The war stripped away my dignity and left scars too deep for words. Still, somewhere in me there is a small voice that dreams. I dream of a home where I can lock the door and feel safe. I dream of my daughters going to school again, walking with books in their hands instead of hunger in their stomachs. More than anything, I dream of a future where we live with dignity, not humiliation, where my daughters will never again know what it means to sleep with empty stomachs and hopeless hearts. 21