The Last Story Abdelaziz Never Wrote

**The Last Story Abdelaziz Never Wrote**

*A Literary Short Story from Gaza*

Editor’s Note:

This story is a work of literary fiction inspired by real experiences of displacement and war. It reflects the fragile line between life, hope, and sudden loss.

At twenty years old, **Abdelaziz** believed the world could still be changed with words.

He was a journalism and media student at the university in Gaza—bright-eyed, restless with ideas, and hopelessly in love with his future. He trained with local media institutions, carried his camera like an extension of his body, and filled his notebooks with unfinished stories. Everyone who knew him admired his energy, his kindness, and the way he listened to people as if their pain mattered—because to him, it did.

He wanted to tell the truth of his city.

When the war began, his lectures stopped overnight. His newsroom dreams collapsed into the single, desperate wish to survive. With his parents, siblings, and relatives, Abdelaziz fled to a school that had been turned into a shelter. The classrooms meant for children became crowded with families, fear, and exhaustion.

There was no water. No heating. No real protection.

For a full week, they lived on thirst and cold. Their breaths turned white at night. Children cried until their voices broke. Abdelaziz wrapped his younger siblings in his jacket and told them stories—sometimes about journalism, sometimes about the Gaza he hoped they would one day see again.

Then came Friday.

That afternoon, his family managed to cook a small meal from what little they had. Abdelaziz ate only two spoonfuls before a knock came at the classroom door. One of his brother’s friends had arrived from a distant area, carrying a precious gift: a container of clean drinking water. It was the first real water they had seen in days.

At the same moment, Abdelaziz spotted another displaced family nearby with nothing on their table. Without hesitation, he lifted a tray of food.

“Let me share this with them,” he said quietly.

He walked down the stairs with water in one hand and food in the other.

One minute later, the world exploded.

Six missiles struck the shelter.

The ground lifted. The walls folded inward. Dust swallowed the sky. Fire screamed through concrete. For long minutes, no one could see anything—only hear shattered bodies falling, glass tearing through air, and voices vanishing mid-cry.

When the dust finally thinned, the shelter was no longer a shelter.

Two buildings had been erased. One floor burned with those still trapped inside. The corridors were filled with bodies—children, women, the elderly—some moving, many not.

Inside one shattered classroom, Abdelaziz’s family was still alive.

The windows were gone. An entire pillar had collapsed into the room. A massive hole split the floor where the explosion had torn through. Their injuries were light—cuts, bruises, bleeding hands.

Then Abdelaziz’s mother asked the question that froze the room:

“Where is Abdelaziz?”

They searched through smoke and bodies. They stepped around the wounded. They lifted cloth from faces. They passed children missing limbs, fathers missing breath, mothers missing their voices. They moved through corridors now filled with death.

They searched the place where the martyrs were gathered and covered.

His body was not there.

They searched for hours.

Ambulances came and went. The injured were taken. The dead were taken. The shelter slowly emptied, leaving behind silence, rubble—and people still buried beneath it.

There were no machines to lift the concrete. No tools to dig deep enough. There was only dust, danger, and the constant threat of more strikes.

At sunset, Abdelaziz’s mother gathered her wounded family and led them away from the ruins. She took her children and grandchildren to a place that felt temporarily safer.

She left behind her heart.

That night, Abdelaziz remained beneath the rubble—still holding what he carried.

Water for his family.

Food for strangers.

Final Line:

Abdelaziz dreamed of telling the world its story—

but the world silenced him before he could finish his own.