Israel destroyed my university, but not my desire for an education

I started my bachelor’s degree in architectural engineering at the Islamic University of Gaza (IUG) in 2021. I was very proud of myself for making it into the field of study that I had always wanted to pursue.

My life seemed all set for the next five years. I was going to study hard, try to pass my exams with good grades, intern at a well-known engineering office, and then apply for a master’s degree.

Everything was going according to plan until October 7 last year. That day I was supposed to submit a university project I had lost a lot of sleep on. The bombing started in the morning but I didn’t pay attention and I kept working on the project. I was used to Israeli attacks on Gaza. I had lived through half a dozen of them.

Then I received news that university classes had been suspended. Again, I thought things would be back to normal soon, so I finished the project and submitted it.

The next day, on October 8, I was supposed to discuss a group assignment with three other classmates. It was slated to be our last discussion to wrap up the project before submitting it on October 10. Instead of talking to my classmates, I received the news that one of them, my dear friend Alaa, had been killed by an Israeli air strike. Instead of finishing the university assignment, I mourned my friend.

On October 14, I bid farewell to my home in Gaza City as my parents, siblings and I fled to Khan Younis, thinking we would be safe there. I left behind my laptop, projects, books, and everything related to my studies.

In Khan Younis, I dreamed of going back to university. Eventually, I did, but not to study. In early December, a mosque right opposite the apartment building where we were staying was bombed by the Israeli army. We got scared and sought shelter in the nearby Al-Aqsa University, taking almost nothing with us. That night, the building where we had stayed was attacked and destroyed. We had to search through the rubble and extract whatever of our possessions we could find.

We stayed another month and a half in Khan Younis. I was afraid of connecting to the internet, let alone checking on classmates and friends. Just checking my WhatsApp was a terrifying nightmare. I was scared of learning about the deaths of people I knew. In December, I received news that another classmate, Fatima, was killed by the Israeli army along with her father and siblings.

In January, the Israeli army intensified bombardment, massacring hundreds in Khan Younis, and then raided Al-Khair Hospital near us. We fled to Rafah and settled in a small tent pitched in the street. Life was truly miserable.

But hope sometimes comes as a surprise visitor, when you least expect it. In March, word spread of a plan to allow Gaza students to enrol in West Bank universities and attend classes remotely. It was such a relief. I felt I was no longer wasting my life. I signed up for the programme and waited to hear from one of the universities.

When Birzeit University (BZU) contacted me, I felt like fortune finally smiled on me. I registered for the maximum number of courses I was allowed and happily waited to start studying again. But my joy was short-lived. Just five days after the semester started on May 7, my family and I again had to flee the advancing Israeli army. Rafah was under attack, so we had to evacuate back to Khan Younis.

The Israeli army’s assault on Khan Younis had left it looking like a ghost town. There was nothing left there. Buildings and infrastructure were completely destroyed. It was not suitable for life, but we had no choice. More than a million people evacuated with us from Rafah and displacement camps and other areas like Deir el-Balah were full to the brink.

This displacement meant that I could not complete my studies at BZU. While life in a tent in the streets of Rafah was hard, the internet there worked for the most part. In Khan Younis, there was no internet whatsoever. The nearest point from which I could connect was in al-Mawasi, seven kilometres (four miles) away.

I had to walk that distance with a heavy heart to send an email to BZU letting them know that I was ending my enrolment.

In June, I received news that my original university, IUG, had come up with a plan to allow students to complete their studies remotely through a combination of self-study and instruction.

It divided the semester we started last October in two, giving us a month to study material that would normally take months before taking exams for the first part; then we had to do the same for the second part.

Finding instructors for each course was a challenge. Many professors had been killed and many others were also displaced and in precarious situations, struggling to provide food and water for their families. As a result, we had one instructor assigned to the entire course of almost 800 students.

I registered for two courses, and every day started walking the seven kilometres to al-Mawasi under the scorching sun, passing heaps of rubble, garbage and puddles of sewage water, to download lectures and stay in touch with my university.

I was satisfied with that. Anything was better than sitting in a hot tent and wasting away in despair.

But maintaining this remote study was extremely difficult. Shortly after I started studying, the Israeli army carried out a massive attack on al-Mawasi, dropping eight enormous bombs on the camp, killing at least 90 people and injuring 300 others.

There was chaos and fear everywhere. I myself was scared to go anywhere near what was supposed to be a “safe zone”.

I did not go back online for a week. The Israeli army had damaged the communications infrastructure. When I finally managed to get connected, the signal was very weak. It took me two days to download one book.

I managed to get back into studying only to be disrupted again. New evacuation orders issued by the Israeli military forced thousands of people into the empty area where we had settled. It became so overcrowded and noisy that I had trouble concentrating for hours.

Charging my phone to study was also another source of suffering. Every two days, I had to send it in the morning to a charging service and wait till the afternoon to get it back, wasting a whole day.

Exams week finally came in August. I had to scramble to find a good internet connection, and when I did, I had to pay a huge sum of money to use it for an hour. I did what I could on the exams.

Three weeks later, I received the results: A+ on both exams. I couldn’t stop smiling that day.

Then I started studying for the second part of the semester and the other three exams, which I took in September.

I finished this improvised semester almost a year after the start of the war – a year of displacement, loss, tent life, nightmares and incessant explosions. As I struggled to study, I realised just how much I missed the small “luxuries” of my previous life: my desk, my bed, my room, my tea and chocolate bars.

These two months of studying for the exams were a small distraction from the overwhelming feelings of loss and despair amid this ongoing genocide. It felt like an injection of an anaesthetic to help me forget for just a little bit the pain of my miserable life.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.