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Shrouq Aila is from Jabalia refugee camp, in northern Gaza. She is currently displaced to Deir al Balah, in central Gaza. Shrouq has been working as a journalist following the killing of her journalist husband, Roshdi Sarraj, by an Israeli air strike in October 2023.

This is an excerpt from an interview that Shrouq gave between December 12, 2024, and January 1, 2025, via WhatsApp voice notes. The full interview is available Everything We Thought Was Beautiful: Interviews with Radical Palestinian Women. 

What is life like for you and your daughter surviving genocide? What was life like before?

We are surviving but it is not something that we manage to do, it’s just the life that we are living so far. We went through lots of hardships. We are living under unbearable and unimaginable conditions. However much I try to describe it, I will always fail. But what was life like before this genocide? You know, I can’t say that it was like New Zealand. But my heart was light compared to these days, during this genocide. I’m carrying a heaviness, and sometimes I feel like I will collapse because of that heaviness.

Before the genocide I was satisfied that my daughter had both her father and mother, a house, and a room that was special for her. We designed it in a very fantastic and eclectic way for a kid, and, let me say, we had a sense of security. We had access to everything that you need to cope and to live properly, even though the freedom of movement was limited because of the siege and as we don’t have an airport here in Gaza. In order to leave, we had to go through Rafah, which is connected to Egypt, then continue by car for a few hours, sometimes days. But we had the option to go and travel and we did so.

On October 2, 2023, Roshdi, Dania, and I travelled to Saudi Arabia and we were planning to go on to Qatar but then the October 7 genocide started, so we cancelled everything and returned to Gaza. I was satisfied in terms of my duties as a mother, and how a mother should provide the baby or kids with all of the means of happiness. The means of a healthy life, a suitable place, a suitable bed, food, and a place to go hike, and all of this stuff.

I feel guilty that we cannot do it now and that I cannot provide my daughter with all of her needs. I somehow feel that I’m failing her because I cannot protect her from the cold and the heat in a tent, and I can’t secure her the healthy food that she should be eating. Dania has spent almost four months without getting a single egg, because of the closure of the border and the limitations of the things that come into Gaza. And the same goes for me, chickens and other vegetables and fruits are not available.

Also let me say last, and this is the biggest thing, Dania does not have her father. She lost him when she was eleven months old and I feel that I’m not able to guarantee my life [either], so when it comes to doing [news] coverage, sometimes I take a step back because I don’t want to put myself at risk. I don’t want to make it worse for her, to lose me as well as her father. I’m not able to be the mother, the father, the son and brother for her. She’s our only daughter so I’m trying to be a family for her at the time that she actually doesn’t have a family, just me.

Can you tell us about Roshdi, and his work as a journalist and founder of a Palestinian media company, Al-Ain Media?

Roshdi established Al-Ain Media along with his best friend Yaser Murtaja in 2008. Both of them were sharing the same vision, the same mind. They agreed more or less about the Palestinian cause, the valuations that were happening in the occupation, and also about documenting the Israeli crimes in Gaza in particular.

In 2018, the team was documenting the Great March of Return, which was a peaceful march located by the border between Gaza and the occupied territories [the territories occupied by Israel in 1948]. People used to march to demand their rights for return to the occupied everything we thought was beautiful lands. The team was documenting this march until an Israeli sniper shot directly at Yaser Murtaja and he died just a few hours after his injury. Five years later, on October 22, 2023, the sixteenth day of the
genocide, the Israeli army targeted the family house of Roshdi Sarraj, my husband.

He was a journalist, and when this genocide started we were at the airport. It was the fifth day of our trip [to Saudi Arabia and Qatar]. It was meant to be a two-month trip, but because of the genocide we decided to cancel everything and immediately get back to Gaza. Roshdi believed that he could do something on the ground and that it should be documented and recorded in the media, and that people outside have to know what is happening here. So because he had that sincere feeling of being a journalist, it was his duty to share as much as he could of the Israeli crimes, the Israeli genocide. That’s why we decided to get back to Gaza.

Can you describe the day that Roshdi was killed?

The day Roshdi got killed, we were at his family home because our apartment was on a high-level floor [in a tall building], and it was quite dangerous. The family home was a two-storey building with a garden. Roshdi was preparing to get himself ready to do some coverage inside ambulances and I said, ‘Roshdi, it’s super risky to do this, because since day one they started to hit ambulances.’ I freaked out about his safety doing this coverage and then he asked me, ‘If I don’t do this, who’s gonna do it?’ So I told him that I totally understood.

We were going to start eating breakfast together, along with his siblings and mother—his father was at his work as he is the municipal mayor of Gaza City [Yahya al-Sarraj]. Then we sat at the table and once we started eating breakfast, we heard a nearby explosion, a very massive one and it turned out to be a carpet bombing, which is several bombings in a row. Actually, this explosion made the table move because of how intense it was. So we ran to the ground floor. When it comes to carpet bombings, it’s important to go to the ground floor because of the windows in the above floors but, you know, there is no safe place. If they attack your home, they attack it. It doesn’t matter if you are in the above floors or the below ones.

I was holding my Dania, and with my other hand I was holding Roshdi’s hand. And then, in two seconds, Roshdi just let go of my hand and he shielded me. He stood in front of me and gave me a shield [with his body]. At that moment, I was really wondering what he’s doing. I just put my hand on his shoulders to say, ‘Roshdi, what are you doing?’

Then the attack happened.

The Israeli army attacked the home with two rockets from F-16s. In the very beginning, I thought that I lost my [blood sugar] because everything went so grey. I felt dizzy and once you are in the explosion area, you don’t hear the explosion because of the pressure. But then I started to smell the gunpowder, the destruction, the burning, the dust, and rubble, and I realised that we had been hit.

I put my hand on my daughter to check her and I found out that she’s moving, she’s not crying but she’s moving. Then I wiped my hand to look for Roshdi and I found nothing. So I turned on the flashlight on my phone and then tried to move. I was unable to move; there was a very heavy thing on my legs. The house was destroyed, collapsed, but nothing had happened to the wall that I was standing on, along with Roshdi’s siblings and mother. So I turned on the light and I found that it was Roshdi on my foot, along with lots of concrete and rubble.

I tried to pull his hand and he did not resist. Then the [visibility] started to get a little bit clearer, so his siblings were able to see that he was collapsing. We pulled him out of the rubble and we moved him in front of his house. I touched his face actually to see what his injury was, and he was gasping. He had a one-and-a-half-centimetre crack on his head. It was the trauma of something. His brain was in, not out, but from this crack I could see his brain, the waves of his brain. I called the ambulances. They said, ‘We apologise, we can’t come, the entire neighbourhood is being targeted and is under the carpet bombing. Once the carpet bombing is done, we will come.’ So I called my brother who is a doctor and I said, ‘Hello, we got attacked. Roshdi is suffering from a severe injury . . . let me know what I can do.’ He said nothing, he just told me to try to go to the hospital on foot.

We put Roshdi on a blanket, and we moved to the hospital on foot. It took us almost fifteen minutes to get to the hospital and the entire area was under intensive attack. Everything was . . . I don’t know how to describe it. Everything was just flying: the concrete, the stones, the dust, the shrapnel, because they kept on attacking the neighbourhood.

We were just moving and there were lots of explosions around us, but we were not terrified, we were just freaked out and numb about what had happened to Roshdi. We just wanted to use every single minute to save his life because he was alive at that time, in his last breaths.

We arrived at the hospital and after five to ten minutes, he just passed away.

Do you have any means to process what has happened, to grieve?

Absolutely no. This is not a suitable environment to heal, because we are still under genocide. There is no privacy. We are like five families in one home now, we are almost eighteen people. Like before, when we were in Rafah, in Deir el Belah, it is the same, because we are displaced in groups. You don’t have the luxury of breaking down because at such times all you have to do is survive your day, to run for your safety, secure your food, secure the basic needs, and there is not a chance at all to grieve.

And also, somehow, I feel denial because Roshdi’s grave is in the north. I am in the south, and I’ve never actually seen his grave. I think there will be another war after declaring the ceasefire of this war. This war is going to be a lifetime’s war that you will never heal from. You will process it in stages, with time, but now, not just me but all Gazans, are stuck in the denial stage because there is no luxury of grief. There is not a suitable time even for psychological therapy, never, because we are still under genocide so it doesn’t make sense.

You have continued Roshdi’s work stating that ‘once you are a journalist, you are a journalist for life’. What does this mean for you and, given the dangers, do you ever consider stopping your work?

Being a journalist for life means that especially under genocide or under occupation, once you choose to become a journalist, it means that you will never have a rest. You will always be on the trigger. There are always lots of things that should be documented.

The Israeli army killed Roshdi, plus almost two hundred other journalists. There are also seventy journalists in jail. The army captured them inside Gaza during the ground invasion. That’s why I’m saying that it’s a sentence for life, being a journalist, because you cannot stop being a journalist. This genocide has proved that being a journalist puts you on the Israeli list of targets.

I used to be a producer and researcher for Al-Ain Media. I still do that but now my work is more administration related. I have also started making films, so I am a photographer and videographer as well now. I’ve never thought about stopping my work because I believe that I’m doing something and changing the brainwashed minds outside
of Gaza. For example, filming underground and using the English language to address the Western world about the suffering we have endured for fourteen months so far.

If there is anything I can offer, I will do it. It is my duty towards my homeland. All the voices of the people, almost two million in Gaza, trapped, should be heard. Each person has a story and each story is bigger than the other, more worrying. Each story has its own war, its own loss, its own devastation.

When it comes to documenting stories, sometimes you feel like you are hearing from them what you are feeling inside and you are unable to utter the feeling or to articulate it. You cannot be separated from your own grief. Each time it hits you during your work because you are dealing with such devastating stories. These stories always take you back to that zero moment, to that moment that your life changed forever and you go home with a version of the grief of that story, and your own as well. You will touch in each story a different colour of suffering.

This has been the most documented genocide in history, yet it continues. How does that impact how you see your role as a journalist?

It is a televised genocide. It’s a livestreamed genocide; we are being slaughtered on the screen with all the faces of killing. We are enduring this killing machine and the world is watching. Sometimes I feel like I’ve lost my hope in humanity because nobody’s able to stop this genocide. Humanity failed us. People show solidarity but solidarity and BDS are not enough. Every single moment there’s someone who’s killed in a brutal way, so there should be an act to stop this.

But yet, I believe that this televised genocide is televised because of the efforts of the journalists who are all on duty working day and night, not able to sleep, displaced, hungry, terrified, and suffering due to losing dear ones, their homes, their streets . . . on duty to continue documenting Israel’s crimes.

Excerpted with permission from Everything We Thought Was Beautiful: Interviews with Radical Palestinian Women edited by Shoal Collective and foreword by Huwaida Arraf. Published by PM Press, 2025. 

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