GAZA-In Gaza, where bombs fall more often than rain, a kindergarten teacher named Doaa is trying to teach children the alphabet through grief, hunger, and rubble.
On the evening of 6 October 2023, Doaa was preparing classroom activities, excited to meet her young students the next day. But the next morning brought devastation, not the sound of school bells. “That day,” she said, “marked the end of any semblance of normal life.”
Since then, Israeli airstrikes have leveled homes, schools, and hospitals, including Doaa’s house and the kindergarten where she once taught. When she returned months later, all she could recover were a few storybooks and an alphabet book. “They whispered to me, ‘Don’t give up. There’s still hope,’” she recalled.
Driven by that hope, she opened a makeshift classroom in a room in the Maghazi refugee camp. It has no garden, no playground, only bare walls and her determination.
She decorated it with bright wallpaper, hung a blackboard, and found paints and a speaker to play cheerful songs. Just 13 children came, most escorted by parents, dodging drones that mimic ambulance sirens.
“Instead of crayons and games, they talk about flour prices and missing food,” Doaa says. When she teaches the letter “A” for “apple,” the children go silent.
They confess how they miss fruit, chocolate, and even bread. One dreams of a watermelon, another of Eid clothes. One boy simply says, “I want the war to stop.”
When asked what question haunts her most, Doaa says, “They ask me when the war will end.” She answers gently, “Soon, we’ll go back to our beautiful kindergarten,” though she knows she cannot promise that.
Each child in her care carries a story of loss, loved ones killed, homes destroyed, and bodies weakened by hunger. One student, Ezz, lost his grandfather and uncles in a single strike. Another, Sobhi, is named after an uncle killed in a previous war.
And yet, every morning, Doaa opens her salvaged alphabet book and tries to teach them words beyond war. She clings to that book and to the belief that Gaza’s children deserve more than this.
“Help them,” she says to the world. “Let them learn in peace. Let their childhoods live.”
