Extract from ABC News
Nicole Johnston spent a year living in Gaza in 2011 and visited the territory more than a dozen times — covering the 2012 and 2014 wars — in more than a decade spent living and working as a correspondent in the Middle East.
It's impossible to fathom the torment of Gaza's families as they try to protect their children as an Israeli ground invasion of Rafah looms.
However, there is one Gaza family I know very well, the Zyaras of north Gaza, and through them I glimpse the horror of the war they're living through.
When I lived in the Gaza Strip in 2011, I spent most Fridays with Samy and Frial Zyara, and their nine children — two girls and seven boys, which include a set of triplet boys.
All the children's names are still imprinted in my mind; Omar, Mohammed, Asil, Bashar, Farah, Yousef, Yasin, Ahmed and Karam. During the period I lived in Gaza, these children were all under the age of 12.
Now, the Zyara children have grown into teenagers and young adults.
Samy, or "baba" (which means father in Arabic), is a journalist for ABC America, so he still has the resources to provide for his family during this war, for now.
But in the past four months he's moved them 16 times, searching for safety, from one end of the Gaza Strip to the other.
Like 85 per cent of Gaza's population, the Zyaras are displaced. They're now sheltering in an apartment in Rafah.
In a recent message Samy wrote: "No safe places, I don't know where to take them."
I always called him the "Commander of the Air Force" for his skill in managing his tribe of children. But last week Samy wrote: "Who is the commander, if he can't make his family safe?"
In an emotional interview with ABC America, Samy said:
"When I'm in a hospital and I see the kids, it's coming to my mind that those could be my kids, because of that I don't know what to do. They consider me a shelter for them and I'm not. I don't know what to say, I try as much as I can."
I listened to the interview while sitting on a Sydney beach. The following day I flew to London and then Jerusalem to report on the war for a British news network.
Building a home in Gaza
When I first started visiting the Zyaras at home, they had eight children and lived in a small two-bedroom flat in the old quarter of Gaza city.
Samy's parents lived downstairs in an apartment, and his brothers all had flats on each floor of the building.
After having a large lunch at the end of the working week, the children would all have an afternoon sleep on mattresses pulled out from beneath beds, with a fair amount of squabbling between them all, arms and legs flung everywhere, while Samy, Frial and I drank coffee.
Once the children were awake, it was time to entertain them.
There didn't seem to be many toys at home — not compared with the average Australian child — but with so many siblings, the members of the Zyara clan always had someone to play with.
Samy didn't want to raise his family in this small apartment. He had a dream to build his family a large house near the Mediterranean Sea, on the western flank of Gaza.
Over the years, he worked hard and saved all of his money for it.
Eventually Samy bought a block of land in a quiet, residential area with big homes and gardens, close to the sea. This was an area where middle-class families lived.
Against all odds, the house was built. It was three storeys, with a large TV area, a majlis or sitting room, four bedrooms, an office — it even had a swimming pool. Samy was rightly proud of it.
However, in Gaza there is always a fear in the back of your mind that you never know when another war with Israel will break out and if your home will be destroyed.
With six wars in 16 years, that fear never goes away.
Last year, the war came to their home.
Until then, the family tried to live in the moment and did everything for their children over the years.
The Zyara children had the best life they could have while living under blockade.
Samy was in strong demand with foreign journalists so he could give his kids more opportunities than most of Gaza's children.
Some of the Zyaras studied karate. Others learned English and took horse-riding lessons.
Looking at pictures of the devastated enclave today, it is hard to imagine there was once a horse-riding school in the centre of it, where well-off Palestinian children learned show jumping.
The last time I was inside Gaza, in 2016, I watched Omar in his riding competition.
When all the weekend activities were over, there was always the family home to go back to, to sit in the shade, drink coffee and snack on grapes.
The Zyara family home
The Zyaras have not been back to their home since the fighting started; the house is in north Gaza, the area that Israel attacked first.
In the early days of the war, the family packed up and left, hoping the war would be over quickly.
However, only a few days into the war, Samy told me it was "not like any other war".
The intensity of the bombing, the size of the bombs, and the scale of destruction were unlike anything Gaza had experienced before. Entire neighbourhoods have been reduced to rubble.
The northern area is devastated — "unlivable", according to the United Nations.
For weeks there was no news about the Zyara family home.
Then a couple of weeks ago someone went to the house and filmed it for Samy.
The home has been partially destroyed. One side of it is rubble. Someone has gone through the home, looting it and trashing rooms. Samy's office and Asil's bedroom are apparently in the worst shape.
It's impossible to know who did it.
What do you say to your friend when their life's work, their home and all the memories inside it, have been destroyed? I haven't found the words.
In Gaza, every family has been touched by tragedy in this war, the Zyaras are no different.
An Israeli air strike killed two of Frial's brothers, her sister-in-law and eight-year-old niece Aryam while they sat at home in north Gaza.
Frial still has one brother left, Jamal al-Durrah.
His son Muhammad al-Durrah became a symbol of the second intifada in 2000.
Twelve-year-old Muhammad was killed during the protests that erupted across the Palestinian territories.
Television footage captured Jamal and Muhammad crouched behind a concrete cylinder. The boy slumped forward and was killed by gunfire.
The footage was broadcast around the world and became a defining image of the intifada.
Generations of trauma run deep.
Tracking the war through the eyes of 12-year-old Karam
With eight children, it seemed that the Zyara family was complete. But then baby Karam came along — one last Zyara.
He was an infant when I left Gaza, but he's now 12 years old.
Before the war he was learning English at school. Karam wants to communicate with the world.
I receive a steady stream of Facebook messages from Karam, as he tries to while away the time, waiting for the war to end.
No schools are open. No normal life.
Karam's birthday was on February 8. Samy posted this note on Facebook:
"Sorry I couldn't celebrate your birthday amidst the chaos of the Israeli war. If we make it through, and peace returns, we'll make sure to celebrate your birthday. Baba."
Going through the messages on my phone is like tracking the war through a boy's eyes.
After seeing the recent photos of his damaged home, Karam wrote: "I'm very sad."
Other messages include: "I can't see you because I'm in Gaza. I hope to leave Gaza with my family," "I'm very sick," and "My message to the world is, stop this crazy war as soon as possible. We are tired. We hear the sounds of violent bombing."
In a video interview Karam did with me in December he said: "We are in Gaza dying slowly."
He continues: "I see destruction, big damage, I see UN schools full of displaced people, I see big bombing in the street."
When I asked Karam what he does during the day, this boy who wants to be a dentist when he grows up, told me:
"I wake up, I check my phone, I brush my teeth and then we search for water."
War separates Zyara family
When the war broke out, four members of the Zyara family were outside Gaza.
They are still outside the strip because all the borders are closed. Almost no-one can get in or out of the territory.
Mohammad is in Tunisia studying law at university.
Frial, Asil and Bashar are in Egypt. They were there when the war broke out and are now stuck there.
In January, after finishing my work assignment in Jerusalem, I flew to Egypt to see them. It had been eight years since we had last been together.
I landed in Cairo, and after some brief confusion about exactly where they were — either Giza, Cairo or Zagazig — it turned out they were a couple of hours drive north of Cairo, in the Nile Delta city of Zagazig.
I asked my driver to take me straight there.
In the dusty backstreets of Zagazig, Asil led me to their bare-bones apartment.
Eighteen-year-old Bashar had only just moved to Zagazig to study medicine at the city's university when the war started. He said there were 3,000 students from Gaza studying at his university.
Bashar is sharing his student flat with his mother, Frial, and his sister, Asil. While Bashar goes to university, they stay home watching the war on Arab networks such as Al Jazeera Arabic, with its non-stop coverage.
I found Bashar had grown from a young boy into a young man, just as kind and charming as he was as a child.
Together we all looked through old photos, talked about Gaza and their family members killed, and watched the day slip away in Zagazig.
When night came and it was time for me to head back to my hotel in Cairo, Asil announced she was coming with me, to have a break from Zagazig for the night, though I knew the war was never far from her mind.
Frial and Bashar met us in Cairo the following day.
The four of us tried to make the most of Egypt's crazy and chaotic capital, but any enjoyment was always tempered by the fact that most of the family is stuck in Gaza, where every day is a battle to survive.
I felt guilty taking them away from Zagazig, but Palestinian hospitality is so strong there was never any question that they would all join me for the entire period I was in Egypt. "While you are here, we are with you," they would say.
So despite the guilt I'm sure we all felt, we went to the pyramids in Giza, ate fish by the Nile, and took a fast boat at sunset on the Nile River, as this teeming megacity flew by.
Last year Asil graduated from a university in Cyprus where she studied international relations. And she has just started an internship with the United Nations.
Asil was about 10 years old when I first met her in Gaza. Back then she trained in karate and grew up surrounded by a band of brothers.
Now she is bravely enduring these hard days for her family.
"I'm watching the news. I'm depressed. I don't want to be outside living my life while they can't," Asil told me.
"I'm always on my bed thinking about my father, my brothers and sister. What are they doing? What did they eat? I hate feeling helpless.
"I'm trying to get them out. I just want them next to me."
Goodbyes are always tough, but with friends from Gaza you never know when you will see them again because of border closures.
Frial, Asil, Bashar and Mohammad do not know when they will be able to return home. Samy and all of the other children do not know when they will be allowed to leave.
No-one knows when the war will end.
I'm now back in Sydney and little has changed. The war in Gaza goes on. Ceasefire talks have stalled. Rafah braces for a ground invasion.
Samy tries to protect the family every day while reporting from hospitals, mass graves and under fire.
Asil, Karam and Samy all message me with updates. I struggle to find the right words to reply.
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