At dusk, Jihan Jabr, 45, leaves yet another cemetery without an answer.

“Where are you, Malak? Where are you, Shahd? Where are you, Omar? Where are you, Lana? Where are you, Khaled?” she calls out

These are the names of her dead children. 

Malak, her eldest daughter; Shahd, the gentle middle child; Omar, her only son; and Lana, the youngest, whose laughter once filled their kitchen. Khaled was just a baby, Jihan’s first grandchild, wrapped in a blanket she had stitched herself.

All of them, along with her husband Salem, were killed in an instant when an Israeli airstrike flattened the house where they were sheltering in Jabalia camp, just days after Israel launched its large-scale assault on Gaza in October 2023.

Jihan was pulled from the rubble of the attack, severely injured and in shock, suffering temporary memory loss. She was taken first to Kamal Adwan Hospital, that was also hit in an airstrike and then to Al Shifa, where she began to regain consciousness.

After partial recovery, Jihan began searching among the graves, searching for traces of her family. Each day, she wanders across northern and central Gaza, looking for a grave, a headstone, or even a patch of earth to hold close. But many cemeteries are in areas under Israeli control, and others have been bombed or erased entirely.

“Death has no address anymore… I can’t even find their graves,” she says.

Many families in Gaza live with the same torment: thousands remain unaccounted for, their bodies never recovered, still believed to be buried beneath the rubble of destroyed homes.

But Jihan is unable to accept this. For two years, she has walked the same paths, from rubble to rubble, cemetery to cemetery, clutching her photographs and calling out the names of her family. She searches for earth to kneel beside, a headstone to press her forehead against, a place to offer prayers.

Instead, she speaks aloud to them, hoping the wind will carrying her words.

As she folds a photograph of her family into her scarf, she takes another look at the rows of earth and broken stones, and turns back to walk past graves to her solitary room in her sister’s home, carrying her grief with her.

“If only I could see their faces one more time,” she mourns.

Before the tragedy

Jihan was born in Rafah, southern Gaza, and grew up in a close-knit family. In 2000, after a three-year relationship, she married Salim Jabr — a man she remembers as “kind, generous… he never let me stay upset. If there was ever an argument, he would always make peace.”

They soon started a family, and together with their four children, they shared their simple home.

“It was just a small apartment,” Jihan recalls, “but it was full of love. We’d wake up together, drink coffee, laugh, and take photos. Malak was our little angel. We were preparing everything for our first grandchild, Khaled.”

In 2008, Salem was wounded in an Israeli strike, leaving him partially paralysed and confined to the home. From that day on, Jihan became not only a wife but also a nurse, a provider, and the family’s pillar of strength. She never complained.

“I helped him with everything,” she says. “Eventually, he recovered, but he was never the same.”

Back in her empty room, her voice is barely audible as she again relives the day that stole her family two years ago. Outside, the sound of shelling rattled the skies. Inside, baby Khaled’s soft cries broke the silence.

“I woke up to do the laundry, and the children were getting dressed,” Jihan recalls. “Then — the explosion. I lost consciousness.”

Jihan cannot forget the final words of her youngest daughter, Lana: “Do you want me to die hungry, mama?”

Losing her family is not Jihan’s only wound. For more than a decade, she has battled cervical cancer. She underwent surgery in Egypt and 33 sessions of radiation inside Israel to keep the disease in remission.

Since October 7, 2023, her therapy has stopped. The crossings are closed, local hospitals lack capacity and even basic medicines. There are an estimated 11,000 cancer patients in Gaza. 

“The health system has collapsed completely,” says Dr. Mohammed Abu Nada, medical director of Gaza’s Cancer Centre. “Over 5,000 cancer patients need treatment outside Gaza, but there is no way out. Only about 10 percent of essential drugs are available.”

Today Jihan has no treatment, only a painkiller and a patience that is wearing thin.

“I feel the cancer is coming back… but it’s not harsher than what I’m already living,” she says.”Sometimes, I wish for death.”

Apart from her weekly cemetery walks, Jihan rarely leaves the house. With no income, limited medicine and only a temporary shelter, she says “I’m just searching for something — anything — that can help me feel human again.”

Jihan’s story is one among thousands. According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA), as of August 2025, more than 2.1 million people in Gaza remain displaced, facing catastrophic shortages of food, clean water, shelter, and medical care.

Her experience highlights the disproportionate suffering of women in modern conflict, where survivors are often left invisible and unsupported.

“I want the world to know what happened. Maybe someone will help.”

Her call places a moral obligation on the international community: to protect civilians, ensure humanitarian access, and offer psychological and medical aid to those left behind.

Having endured unimaginable loss, Jihan clings to hope: to perhaps one day be able to find her children’s grave and find a place to whisper their names into something more than empty air.