Huda Skaik
I did not inherit the Nakba as a memory. It has consumed my entire existence.
I grew up hearing about 1948 as history—something that happened to my grandparents, something studied in school, an event of mourning marked every 15 May. I naively thought of the Nakba as a story of loss that had been and gone.
I was wrong.
As a child, I used to wonder how someone could ever live without a home to shelter them. I could not imagine it. At least, until this became a harsh and painful reality for all of us in Gaza.
In fact, in recent years, many of us have lost our homes and been displaced several times over.
Of course, this was Israel’s intention. Losing our home makes us Palestinians feel even more uprooted; it is another way to disconnect us from our homeland.
After all, a home is not just a set of walls and a roof. It is the quiet certainty that you belong somewhere. It is safety without negotiation. It anchors the most precious memories—the corner where your mother sat and cooked, the window that held the morning light, the door that always opened widely to welcome family and friends.
This is how the Nakba continues.
It lives in the cycle of destruction and reconstruction. In the displacement that no longer shocks, only repeats. In the quiet understanding that what was lost once can be lost again.
However, the Nakba is also about what refuses to disappear. Much to Israel’s dismay.
We carry our history with us, not as nostalgia, but as proof of existence. Our embroidered thobes are not just traditional garments—they are maps of identity, stitched with stories older than displacement. The keffiyeh is not just a symbol—it is a language of belonging. Our culture survives because it is lived, not displayed.
Indeed, Palestinian history is not something we now look back on. It is something we carry forward.
We exist in a place where time loops, and each generation inherits the unfinished loss carried through previous tragedies, previous wars, previous ethnic cleansing campaigns.
The catastrophe was not a one-time event; it has remained for 78 years. It continues to shape geography, identity, and daily life across Gaza and the West Bank, as well as for the wider diaspora.
The Nakba began with displacement, when more than 700,000 Palestinians were forced from their homes, keys in their pockets and villages erased from maps. But what followed was not only exile; it was the long struggle of being told that return is impossible, that memory is negotiable, and that loss would be permanent.
Certainly, for Palestinians, especially those in Gaza, the Nakba is not behind us.
Each cycle of violence that comes with Israel’s repeated military escalations adds new layers of calamitous destruction and mass displacement, reinforcing a pattern that began in 1948 and has not ended.
Every war, every forced evacuation, every demolished home adds another layer to a story that has far from concluded.
I believe the Nakba has always been an attempt to make the Palestinian people temporary on this earth.
Nevertheless, we are still here, despite all the catastrophes inflicted upon us and our land by Israel.
We carry the past, the present, and the future all at once.
Because beyond the tragedy, the Nakba has instilled in us the determination to remember it all. To retain the stories and the detailed descriptions of our grandparents’ villages and homes that we’ve never even seen. We’ve memorised the names of our destroyed neighbourhoods, we pass down the keys, and we vow to return to all that was taken from us.
Just as hundreds of families were exiled with this conviction, we too will hold steadfast to this promise.
As long as we are here, the story is not over.
Huda Skaik is an English literature student, a writer, and a video maker. She is a member of We Are Not Numbers, and she also a contributor for Electronic Intifada and WRMEA. She dreams of a future as a professor, professional poet, and writer.