A whole life in one bag

Nima Al-Sheikh, 60, sits in her brother's home in the Al-Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, under a grey sky heavy with gunpowder smoke. She was recently forced to flee her home in Jabalia camp in the north of the Strip following evacuation orders from the Israeli army.

Al-Sheikh, a mother of four and grandmother of two, clings to her well-worn holdall, which she has patched up several times. To make the bag more distinctive, she has tied a piece of cloth to it.

She is constantly checking its contents, ready to flee at a moment's notice. "I've been displaced more than nine times since 20 October 2023. This bag never leaves me. I sleep with it beside me—it holds the memory of my destroyed home," she says.

"A mobile closet"

Since the outbreak of war in Gaza, bags have been packed not for holidays or trips, but to escape bombings. These journeys are not made by choice, but forced, with no destination, schedule or ticket. Al-Sheikh, also known as Um Ahmed, sees her displacement bag as a "mobile closet" that contains whatever could be salvaged from a life under constant threat.

The items in the bag are not chosen randomly but selected based on the family's needs and the emotional attachment to each item, often requiring tough decisions about what to leave behind. Packing the bag is strictly the mother's responsibility, while other tasks are divided among the children, like carrying blankets, bedding, water jugs and some kitchen utensils.

"It's not just a bag—it's the summary of an entire life, split into parts," Um Ahmed explains. "It contains identity documents, birth certificates, medicine, and things dear to me—like a ring my son gave me at his wedding, a traditional embroidered dress from my mother, a small Qur'an, and a string of prayer beads." The bag also contains canned foods such as peas and fava beans.

With every new wave of displacement, triggered by evacuation orders issued by the Israeli army, the same scenes are repeated: first comes the warning order, then the sound of missiles, and a few minutes later, men, women and children are seen running with their bags in search of shelter. According to the United Nations, at least 1.9 million people—about 90 percent of Gaza's population—have been displaced multiple times during the war, some more than ten times.

"Nothing left but what's in my bag"

Mahmoud Awadallah, 34, got married a year before the war. He had dreamed of a warm life with his wife and infant daughter, Sila, but his dream turned into a nightmare with the outbreak of war.

"Since the beginning of the war, my wife prepared the black backpack we used for summer trips, just in case," says Awadallah. He and his small family held out in their home in Al-Nasr neighbourhood in western Gaza City until the night of 6 January 2024, when they fled south to Deir al-Balah amid intense shelling around their home.

"We ran under fire—I carried the bag and my baby, and my wife was barely able to walk beside me," he recalls. That day, his wife forgot their daughter's toy while fleeing. The baby cried endlessly. The next day, Awadallah risked his life to go back and retrieve it. Since then, the family has been displaced five times, and their home was eventually destroyed months after they fled it.

The black backpack contains a container of baby formula, diapers, their daughter's toys, her first birthday dress, a phone charger and a flash drive with photos of her birth and family outings. "I never imagined that our beach vacation bag would become a symbol of displacement and pain."

His wife, Nasreen, 27, also says, "There's no makeup, perfume, or any of the accessories a new bride might take along... I wasn't going on a trip; I was fleeing death."

Nasreen laments losing her bridal trousseau and the furniture of their new home, bought with money she had worked hard to save. "Nothing is left but what I carried in that bag."

Awadallah and his wife now live in a shelter centre in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza. Every time he looks at their black backpack, it's as if the bag is their old home, folded in on itself. The couple dream of an end to the war, so they can rebuild their home and raise their daughter in peace.