Between Gaza and Europe: Searching for home

This story was originally published by The New Humanitarian.

Sometimes the difference between places is not marked just by airports or borders, but by very small things: the way bread is bought; the length of a greeting; how many times your name is spoken in a single day.

When I left Gaza and came to Europe, I did not only move from one city to another – I moved from one rhythm of life into another. From density to openness. From excessive closeness to organised distance.

In Gaza, before the war, life was not easy, but it was full of people. This is the first difference I notice now. People there were not the background of the scene – they were the scene itself. The street was not merely a road, but a continuous field of interaction: greetings, questions, comments, jokes, passing observations. You could not walk without being seen. Being seen was part of being alive.

In Europe, I can walk for an entire hour without anyone stopping me, recognising me, or asking me anything. At first, it felt like a beautiful respect for privacy. On other days, it felt like transparency – as if I were passing without leaving a trace.

Morning in Gaza began from the outside. Even if I stayed in bed, morning entered me through sound: the bread seller, the school bus, doors opening, a mother calling her child by their full name – and it is always the full name when the moment is serious.

In Europe, morning is internal. Windows are closed, soundproofing is excellent, everything happens in measured quiet. Sometimes I need to look at the clock to confirm that daylight has truly started. Morning here does not invade you – it waits for your permission.

Even bread tells a different story. In Gaza, buying bread was a near-daily ritual. You go, you wait a little, you feel the warmth through the bag, sometimes you tear a piece and eat it on the way home.

In Europe, bread is astonishingly diverse: grains, seeds, dietary, organic, free of this and that. But it is often cold when purchased. Sliced, packaged, calculated. The quality is high, but the relationship is less intimate.

The table itself is a different world. In Gaza, food is cooked in excess. There is always the possibility that someone else will arrive. “Exactly enough” is rare. Extra is a form of social safety. Sharing is automatic: taste from my plate, take this, try that.

In Europe, I learned that each person has their own plate, their own order, their own choice. No one reaches into your dish unless they are very close to you. Boundaries are clear even in eating. Sometimes this is comfortable – sometimes strange. I miss the chaos of sharing.

In Gaza before the war, visits did not require complex planning. You could hear a knock on the door at any reasonable hour, and the reason could simply be: “We missed you”. Time was elastic. Sitting stretched. Conversations branched. Tea refilled itself without asking.

In Europe, a visit is a small project: a message, a proposed time, a confirmation, an implied duration. No one wants to press on anyone’s schedule. Relationships respect calendars. I value this – and sometimes I miss the warm disorder.

Family in Gaza was a daily presence, not a seasonal one. Even when we did not meet, we lived inside each other’s circles. News travelled fast. Care was collective. Sometimes privacy felt narrow – but support was immediate.

In Europe, family may be distant both geographically and emotionally. Independence has a high value. Self-reliance is expected. Asking for help is a conscious decision, not an automatic response. This builds individual strength – but it creates emotional distances.

Time itself has a different personality. In Gaza, time is social and emotional. It forms around people and occasions: visits, mourning, celebration, invitations, obligations. Lateness is not a crime – it is part of reality.

In Europe, time is geometric. Precise. Divided. Delay requires immediate apology. Appointments are honoured like small contracts. I learned here the value of precision – but I still carry my original flexibility inside me.

Mobility after Gaza

Europe is an open map. I place small markers on the cities I pass through and promise myself I will return to complete the rest. I grew up in a place often described as an open-air prison, where movement was never ordinary and travel was never simple. Now I cross borders with a train ticket in my pocket. The ease of it startles me. Freedom feels light – almost too light – as if my body hasn’t yet learned how to carry it.

Every country I have visited has left a flavour in me, not just a memory. And yet, each time I taste something new, I find myself comparing it – unintentionally – to food in Gaza, smiling while I complain: there, the taste was warmer, simpler, more honest.

I went to Italy – a country that treats food as a daily art, not a need. I passed through Rome, Milan, Biella, Siena, and reached Turin. In every city, pasta was cooked like a family secret. Coffee was drunk with brief reverence. Pizza was taken with near-moral seriousness. Tiramisu was served like a soft conclusion to life, not just a meal. And still I laughed to myself: Why do I miss Gaza’s humble restaurants? Why did comfort feel greater there, even when the place was smaller and the chairs simpler? Perhaps because familiarity was one of the ingredients.

I went to Belgium and passed through Brussels – the city of dense chocolate and sweetness drifting through the streets. I tasted waffles layered with chocolate and cream, beautiful like something made for display. Yet I immediately remembered our simple desserts – less decoration, more intimacy.

As for the Netherlands, it is the place where I feel a particular lightness. I moved between Rotterdam, Maastricht, Amsterdam, and the Hague. What I loved most was the rhythm: the bicycles, the open streets, the water, the order that does not suffocate. I spent long hours riding my bike between alleys and bridges, learning the city with my naked eye rather than from behind glass. I tasted chocolate, fries with mayonnaise, waffles again – but with a different character this time. In the Netherlands, movement itself feels like part of the culture – mobility as a small daily freedom.

I was also in France – a country that grants you sharp contrasts from one city to another. I had a chance to explore many places: Marseille, where I am staying for a while now; Paris with its weight and elegance; Avignon; Aix-en-Provence; Cassis; and distant Normandy.

Comfort in food does not come only from the quality of ingredients but from the feeling that you are among your people.

In France, I ate strawberry crêpes from the street, tasted famous cheeses with strong flavours, and ate steak prepared in multiple ways. French cuisine is rich and varied, yet I miss a simple homemade plate from Gaza – without classification, without stars, without a long menu – just a taste that knows me, and that I know. Comfort in food does not come only from the quality of ingredients but from the feeling that you are among your people.

There are still many cities I have not reached yet. I do not treat that as a lack, but as a promise. Europe, for me, is not a checklist to finish, but an experience to live slowly. City by city, taste by taste, street by street. Wherever I go, I carry the inner measure of my first home.

The sea

Before anything else, my favourite place in Gaza was the sea. Not because it was more beautiful than other seas – but because it knew me. I used to go with my usual coffee – same order, same taste, same cup I held carefully like part of a ritual. I sat close enough to hear the waves, far enough to think. I did not need anything more. The sea and coffee were a sufficient arrangement for the world.

In Gaza before the war, the sea was a space of restored balance. When everything tightened, the horizon opened a straight line before your eyes. I watched the waves like a language and measured my mood against their movement – sometimes high and rushing, sometimes quiet and hesitant. Coffee in my hand, salt in the air – and that was enough.

Now I am in Marseille. Everyone tells me: this is the same sea. The same water. The same horizon. I smile and nod – but something inside me disagrees. The sea is not water alone. The sea is place-memory.

I sit here facing the sea too – but instead of coffee alone, there is a cigarette. Then another. Then another. I never imagined I would become someone who smokes. I always said I disliked the idea, the smell, the dependency. And now I smoke slowly, as if filling an invisible gap. I don’t know exactly when it began. It slipped in – a temporary habit that has remained.

Sometimes I feel I crossed geographically faster than I crossed internally. The place changed – the inner rhythm did not. As if the soul requires an additional visa.

Strangely, the sea in Marseille is calmer than I expected. Its waves are low, its voice soft, as if it does not wish to disturb anyone. I sit and wonder: why doesn’t it calm me? Why do I miss higher waves, more movement, a water-chaos that resembles the inside of me?

I watch the cigarette between my fingers and wonder whether this is the slowness of experience or its weight. Does the body process transition in its own language? Do some feelings fail to find words and turn into habits instead? Is part of me still sitting on Gaza’s shore and has not yet arrived?

Sometimes I feel I crossed geographically faster than I crossed internally. The place changed – the inner rhythm did not. As if the soul requires an additional visa.

How do we change without announcement? How do our rituals shift while we believe we are still the same?

Perhaps no one leaves their first place without leaving something behind and carrying something new. Perhaps the cigarette is only a visible sign of an invisible weight. And perhaps, simply, I am still on the way – not yet arrived.

I put out the cigarette, order another coffee, and try to learn the sea again – from the beginning.

A new language of movement

The bicycle has always been my small way of feeling free. In Gaza too, I rode whenever I could. It was not just transportation – it was a private field of motion, a way to escape a little from crowds, from talk, from expectations. When I ride, my body moves ahead of my thoughts, and the air rearranges what is inside me.

But in Amsterdam, it is entirely different. There, the bicycle is not a hobby – it is a complete way of life. A city that moves on two wheels. At first I was amazed that bicycles have their own lanes, their own signals, their own clear rules. Even freedom here has a marked path painted on the ground.

I rode my Dutch bicycle between canals and bridges, surrounded by people moving with confidence and measured speed – no chaos, no shouting, no sudden cuts across the road. No one treats the bicycle as secondary.

Sometimes I rode slowly with a cigarette in hand, watching the water, the glass facades, thinking: Even freedom can be organised. In Gaza, riding a bicycle was a small act of breaking constraint – in Amsterdam it is part of the system itself.

There, I searched for a safe path to pass. In Amsterdam, the safe path is drawn for me in advance.

This detail shook me more than I expected – that a clear path for freedom does not cancel it, but protects it. That you do not have to invent your road every time. That movement is not a risk but a daily right.

And still, the feeling remains similar: air on the face, light speed, the certainty that I move by my own strength. Cities changed. Rules changed. I changed a little too – but the movement of the bicycle remains a moment of bodily truth: I move, therefore I breathe.

Songs of exile

Even songs have changed. The music I used to listen to in Gaza was not only different in language or rhythm – it was different in function. There, music accompanied life: at home, on the road, at work, among people. I did not need it as a shield but as background.

Now headphones are the most important thing I carry before leaving home or starting any trip. I check for them the way I check for my passport. Because movement here is constant: metro, trains, cars, boats, bicycles, trams, airplanes. Continuous passage across cities, countries, maps. Music has become the only fixed bridge across these shifting routes.

I put on my headphones as if I am creating a room inside my head. The world moves quickly around me while inside the song I move slowly. Music is no longer entertainment – it is emotional companionship. A way to understand what I feel without explaining it.

I now lean towards songs that do not lift the mood – but touch it. Songs that feel written from a place resembling quiet exile in the soul.

There is a Portuguese song I listen to often while travelling. Each time it begins, something in my chest softens. Especially the part where the singer says that no matter how it appears, he will not belong to that city – that the sea of people, the different sun, the blocks of concrete do not awaken the feeling of home.

Each time, those words pass straight from the headphones to a sensitive place inside me – without translation, without resistance.

There is another song by a young singer whose voice is both fragile and strong at once. He sings that he has seen the most beautiful places in the world, yet feels like a walking machine, watching everything through a screen, as if nothing is entirely real. This line in particular accompanies me during takeoff – the moment of separation from the ground, when cities turn into dots.

My tears fall quietly. No dramatic crying, no sound – just water leaving the eyes. As if the body understands music faster than consciousness. Sometimes I look around me on the train: people on their phones, their laptops, in low conversations. And I am somewhere else entirely – inside a song. Perhaps that is why headphones have become part of my mobile identity – a small house placed over the ears.

In and out of context

The street in Gaza was an evening living space. Night was not the end of activity – sometimes it was the beginning: shops opening, people walking, children playing, overlapping sounds. In many European cities, night quiets early – especially outside the centres. Order wins over spontaneity. The quiet is beautiful but different from vitality.

Clothing is also a language. In Gaza, what we wear does not detach from the society around us. There is always awareness of context: family, neighbourhood, customs. Choice is personal – but surrounded by collective gaze.

In Europe, clothing feels like an individual statement. Astonishing diversity. Boldness. No one pays much attention. Visual freedom is wide. At first I watched with surprise – then I felt a gradual liberation inside myself.

Shops here are astonishing in their organisation. Everything classified, coded, comparable. Choices so numerous they create confusion. In Gaza, choice was simpler: what exists is the option.

Even the question “How are you?” is different. In Gaza, it can open a story. It is an invitation to speak. In Europe, it is often a brief greeting – unless you are very close. Emotional compression is part of politeness here.

In Gaza before the war, education was a family project, not only an individual one. Academic success was collective pride. Study decisions were discussed at home. Ambition was tied to social mobility and stability.

In Europe, paths are more flexible. You can change fields, begin again, retry without harsh judgment. Failure carries less stigma. This gives courage – but it also assumes a social safety net.

Shops here are astonishing in their organisation. Everything classified, coded, comparable. Choices so numerous they create confusion. In Gaza, choice was simpler: what exists is the option. Simplicity was imposed – but it sometimes reduced anxiety.

I also notice differences in body language. In Gaza, physical closeness is natural: long handshakes, a touch on the shoulder, close seating. In Europe, distance is measured. The body respects personal space. Even standing in line has calculated gaps. I learned that distance here is a form of respect, not coldness – but it took time to feel it.

In Gaza, I was known by context before I spoke: whose daughter, which neighbourhood, which family. Identity was given quickly. In Europe, I introduce myself from the beginning each time. I choose which version to present. This is exhausting sometimes – and sometimes liberating.

There, belonging is ready-made. Here, belonging is built.

Closeness and distance

I miss things I once overlooked: someone calling my name from afar, my presence assumed at an occasion, a place kept for me without reservation. And I appreciate things I did not have: declining an invitation without long explanation, saying no without crisis, choosing solitude without being misunderstood.

I realise now that the real difference is not only in quality of life – but in the shape of relationships. Gaza before the war was closer than necessary sometimes. Europe is more distant than necessary sometimes.

Between excessive closeness and excessive distance, I am learning a third form: chosen closeness.

I do not long because everything there was better. I do not admire because everything here is better. I am learning that a human being can carry two rhythms in one heart. Can speak two social languages. Can long and appreciate at the same time.

Perhaps home is not one place. Perhaps home is where your face is seen – and your boundaries are respected. And I am still learning how to gather visibility and boundaries in one life.

Only, the Gaza that was my home no longer exists.

The New Humanitarian puts quality, independent journalism at the service of the millions of people affected by humanitarian crises around the world. Find out more at www.thenewhumanitarian.org.