Famine, fear, and the fight for bread.

This article was originally published in Samah Zaqout's substack. Samah is a Palestinian writer, translator, and lecturer from Gaza. It has been republished here with permission.

A year has passed since I wrote this, yet famine still devours Gaza….

In Gaza, getting white bread is a rare comfort—a gamble with your life. 

Every morning in Gaza, people rush to reserve their spot in the bakery queues. By 6 am, bakery doors open, but the queues start hours earlier and continue stretching until nearly midnight, yet the crowd never thins. Some send their elderly mothers to the front—fragile hands and tired eyes given priority, a desperate attempt to secure them a loaf first.

But in Gaza, even bakeries are not safe from the bombs.

One day, my father took me and my two sisters to try our luck at a bakery. The women's queue was often shorter, often faster. But when we arrived, the bakery was suffocatingly packed — people shoving, jostling, and shouting. Fists flew as some tried to snatch loaves from each other.

My father's face turned grim. "Even if we wait until morning, we won't get a turn. Let's try somewhere else," he said.

We left tired and empty-handed.

Hours later, news broke: that bakery had been bombed. Dozens killed and injured. Bread and blood scattered across the street.

I couldn't shake the thought: 'What if we had stayed?'

Listen: Gaza is starving — here's what you can do to help. Post continues below.

From feasts to famine: the Ramadans we lost

Not long after, the bakeries closed. No more endless queues, no more hours spent waiting just to get a bundle of bread. But the silence they left behind was heavier. All the crossings were closed, no supplies were coming in, and flour was completely off the market.

Flour became scarce, and prices soared — 60, sometimes 70 shekels per kilo. We'd buy what little we could, then spend hours baking over blackened coal, constantly tending the fire to keep it alive. But the struggle didn't end there. When white flour vanished completely, we turned to wheat.

I remember one day at the market. It was chaos — crowds pushing, shouting, desperate for food. Makeshift stalls everywhere, no proper shops, no order. People shouted over one another. Then we found an elderly man selling flour for 35 shekels. "Take it for 35," he said, scooping flour into our bag. We grabbed it and rushed home.

But it wasn't just flour. Everything was gone—meat, chicken, vegetables, fruit—even snacks. We survived on canned food. Every day we'd open new tins — beans one day, lentils the next, rice, whatever we could turn into a meal.

By Ramadan 2024, famine loomed. Markets emptied fast.

In Ramadan 2024, we've been displaced for the tenth time. We had taken shelter in a relative's home in western Gaza, "the safe zone", after being forced to leave Jabalia camp due to threats of ground invasions. Fifty people crammed under one roof. Children, women, and elderly alike. 

But the crowding wasn't the worst part. The shelling that echoed—even in this "safe" zone—was terrifying. But famine eclipsed them both.

Everything was scarce, even clean water. We relied on salty water for cooking, drinking, and bathing.

One day, my cousin managed to find a few bottles of fresh water. Our family's share was half a bottle—a precious gift in desperate times.

My father, responsible for nine of us, went to the market every day, desperately searching for something to break our Ramadan fast. Most days, he returned with nothing but a small bag containing perhaps two cans of lentils or a tray of rice. The market was stripped bare.

I remember the day my father came home with a handful of dried fruits and nuts—there wasn't a single fresh one left in the market. He divided them between us, making scarcity feel like a feast.

The dried fruits and nuts from the market. Image: Supplied.

I don't know if it was intentional to block aid entry in Ramadan—perhaps it was—because even in Ramadan 2025, the blockade returned. Since the second day of the holy month, Israeli forces had sealed off Gaza, cutting off all aid, food supplies, and cooking gas. Famine returns!

The markets fell silent again. The few remaining shops stood empty, their shelves gathering dust. 

We turned once again to cans—those cold, lifeless tins that now defined our suhoor and iftar. 

I kept thinking of past Ramadans—tables crowded with dishes, our rush to prepare the table, as each person adds their own appetiser, and the smell of Mama's cooking filling our home, which now turns to rubble. Evenings felt different—we'd all go to the mosque for Taraweeh prayers, then head home to make dessert, usually Qatayef, and sit together or visit my aunts. 

Now, the air felt colder, the evenings quieter.

Instead, we huddled around tins of food, our hands busy feeding the fire with bits of wood and scraps of paper just to get a flame going. By evening, we found ourselves brushing away the layers of ash that settled across the room. 

The streets were silent, stripped of Ramadan's usual glow. No Ramadan decorations, no lights, no joyful chants, just deafening silence, interrupted only by the sudden terrifying blasts. Each explosion shattered our fragile hope that this nightmare would end, that the fear would ease. Instead, it reminded us that fear was something we could never escape.One night, we needed some bread for suhoor, but it was already late. My father insisted on going to the bakery so we could eat before fasting. Every passing second stretched with fear.

Currently, all bakeries in Gaza are closed. All vegetables, fruits and flour have almost vanished. One sack of flour is worth its weight in gold. And again, we are back, spinned endlessly in this vicious circle.  

But even in those moments of despair, we clung to what we could—to prayers, to memories, and to hope that next Ramadan would be different.

Blood-stained bread

The price of flour skyrocketed from $10 to $1,000 in the black market before disappearing completely. Desperate, thousands had no solution but to gather at Nabulsi checkpoint, the gateway for flour trucks, hoping to bring home a sack to feed their children.

One evening, my father and three cousins set out, determined to return like everyone else—with a sack of flour. But what awaited them was beyond anything my father had imagined.

They left at dusk on a Thursday, chasing whispers that the trucks would arrive after sundown, Maghrib prayer. "The air was bitterly cold, so people gathered wood from the ruins of bombed homes, lighting small fires to keep warm," my father said.

"Thousands stood there, waiting,"he added.

My father and three cousins stood in a place set apart from the checkpoint, a spot that felt safer—at least for a while.

Hours passed. Midnight. Then dawn. 

The trucks finally appeared, so did the gunfire, so did death.

Those closer to the checkpoint shouted, spreading the news—the flour had arrived.

My father and cousins split into pairs, hoping to navigate the chaos. The plan was simple: grab a sack and go home.

Then, the shooting began. Explosions echoed as the trucks pushed through. But by the time the trucks reached my father, they carried no flour—only the wounded and the dead.

"We do not want blood-stained flour," my father told my cousin.

They abandoned their search and began looking for their other two missing kin as the crowd scattered. Hours passed. The sun rose, revealing an emptying battlefield. Some had carried home their dead. Some had carried home their wounds. And some had clutched their sack of flour worth more than life itself.

Compelled, my father returned home, praying the missing had done the same. But they were not there! 

Eventually, he found them at Al-Shifa Hospital, erased within the expanse of the injured and the martyred. By morning, at least 112 were killed, 760 injured. 

My mom, my sisters, my female cousins and I had spent the night paralysed with fear, unable to sleep, clinging to our whispered prayers. When news of the massacre reached us, terror consumed our hearts. With no communication, all we could do was pray.

Finally, they returned.

Days later, my father bought a sack of flour from a man who had survived that night. He paid a thousand shekels—three hundred dollars.

When he carried it through the door, we were ecstatic!

"I never thought things would come to this, but the weight of hardship left no other choice,' my father said.

This article was originally published on Substack. You can find more of Samah's writing here.

Feature Image: Getty.