“I need a haircut,” I told my barber, Mohammed.
“Okay. The usual?”
“No, I am proposing to my love tomorrow.”
The lie came easily. I’m single. I have been for a long time. But I needed the barber’s hand to move with extra purpose and care, because this was no normal haircut.
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A little while before, the Irish Government had called me. It was a Tuesday in August. “Prepare to leave Gaza for Ireland. Maynooth University is ready.”
For more than a year, I had rehearsed my departure from my home in Gaza like my little brother Ali practises flying kites. Now, the rehearsal was over.
I had big plans, but how do you leave your life? How do you give up your home? I wanted to leave with my spine straight, my dignity intact. One of my American friends told me, “Stay focused.” Great. Focused on what? I didn’t want to feel like I was running away. But to leave home with “dignity”? The word has lost all meaning.
For a start, I finally decided, it means how I look.
In the barber’s mirror, I saw the image of my brother, Nour – a mirage, because he was missing since one of the earlier evacuations. “How do I look?” I asked him silently. “Do I look human enough for Ireland?”
As I left the tent for home, I could hear noise and people laughing. My whole world had come to say goodbye.
For my entire life, I had been the one left behind, watching others disappear into the possibility of elsewhere: cousins, friends, acquaintances. But this time, I was the ghost preparing to vanish. I felt what they must have felt, and my joy was shrouded in fear, like a second skin. What if one Israeli soldier woke up on the wrong side of hatred at Kerem Shalom (the exit from Gaza into Israel) crossing? This is Gaza logic – I knew then, and I know now, that excitement only means getting ready to be disappointed.
That evening, I carried two gallons of water to my makeshift bathroom, and poured it over my body. My skin slowly remembered the feel of being clean. No one would see me cry there, bathed in water and sand, salt and soap, and my own grief.
I dressed in my only clean clothes and moved through the hugs, saving my mum for last. My mother is pure love, incapable of hatred even though hatred has claimed so many of her own. I breathed in the scent of home one final time. Then, stepping outside my tent, my family accompanied me into the street, following like a funeral procession.
I found a taxi instead of a donkey cart to carry me from Al Aqsa’s downtown area to the middle area, where the evacuation bus would pick me up at 3am, even though now it was only 4pm.
At the final moment, it struck me that this might be the last goodbye. My last words would be my final message to Gaza. What should I say? Before climbing in, I looked at Ali and said, “Deer balak ‘ala ammak” (Take care of mum). I wasn’t sure if he got me. “Ali, you take care, and take care of mum, okay?”
These were my last words to Gaza.
I didn’t turn back to see my family again. I felt too ashamed. I was leaving for peace, and all they had was famine and war. I wished to tell myself that I leave so that one day I can bring them out too. Except I didn’t believe that either.
That night, I lay on asphalt, using my backpack as a pillow. But I stayed awake, following the Irish instructions with the devotion of a monk. At 3am, I stepped on to the bus, into the unknown, with a group of more than 40 other scholars.
As the bus lurched forward, all I could see was a landscape of ruin, Gaza in fragments, Ali’s eyes with heavy responsibilities, and beautiful Nour’s absence.
By 7am, we had reached Rafah, the place where I was born. The war had turned it into a red zone, occupied by forces that made it a graveyard.
Still, I searched through broken concrete. Maybe Nour was trapped somewhere, waiting.
Nour’s name means light in Arabic, and without him, my life is shrouded in darkness.
[ Palestinian student evacuated from Gaza: ‘I cried when I saw the Irish flag’Opens in new window ]
At Kerem Shalom, one of the Gaza co-ordinators offered me a cigarette. In August 2025, a single cigarette cost a day’s wage. I had quit smoking, but took one anyway, for the ritual of this fellowship. Soon I found myself in a circle of fellow exiles, puffing smoke into the morning air, and watching it drift over the border.
Finally, we crossed to the Israeli side. The Irish embassy staff were waiting like angels. They gave us edible food and water that was not rationed. I also witnessed the magic of my visa emerging from a printer. When I looked at it, my eyes lost focus. This one little piece of paper was all it took?
The rest of that journey to Jordan, then to Turkey, to Dublin, is still a blur. Yet, in and out of sleep, Nour’s voice kept coming to me: “Carry me with you, not as your weight, but as your wings.”
Now I am in Maynooth, the ceasefire announcement this week felt surreal, like a “pinch me” moment. I believe it is real, but I am racked by questions. Will I be able to bring my family here to Ireland?
During the 2014 war, we lost our family business. A few years later, we rebuilt it, but in 2021, it was partially destroyed. Now, it’s completely gone, along with my house and farm and maybe Nour too. All I can think about is getting my family somewhere outside to ease their burden, help them find comfort, process the trauma, and start over, but I don’t know how.
At night, I dream Nour is looking for me. “I’m in Ireland, Habibi,” I say back to him. “Everything is green and lovely. I have moved into my accommodation in Maynooth. Just one room, but big enough for two. I saved a place for you by the window. Just tell me where you are, Habibi. I will come get you.”
I wonder whether he is alive somewhere in the Israeli prisons and couldn’t reach out to us. Will he be released as part of the agreement? Will I wake up to a call from my tent back in Gaza, to find Nour Facetiming me and saying, “I miss you too, big brother”?
And then, last Tuesday, I was sleeping and woke up to my family calling me. “Abdallah, guess what happened?” They had met three Palestinians who had just been released, and they said they had seen Nour. He is alive. He is okay. I found myself on the ground crying. Just tell me where you are, Habibi. I will come get you.
Abdallah Aljazzar (26) is studying for a Masters in Literature of Engagement at Maynooth University, where he is the programme co-ordinator for Palestinian students coming from Gaza
