'It felt like death was chasing us everywhere we went' One family's journey across Gaza

The artist Maisara Baroud and his family have been displaced 12 times since the start of the Israel-Gaza war. He describes their journey and the impact of the fighting

- Bethan McKernan

THE ARTIST MAISARA BAROUD never found living in Gaza easy. The Israeli-Egyptian blockade, imposed in 2007 after Hamas's violent takeover of the territory, was suffocating, and Rimal, his middle-class neighbourhood in Gaza City, had not been spared from airstrikes in the previous wars T with Israel.

Despite everything, he said, his family had worked hard to establish a quiet existence after being expelled from their village in what is now Israel in 1948.

Baroud, 48, was a lecturer in the fine arts department at Al-Aqsa University, and he, his wife, Khansa, 47, and children Rita, 21, Ilya, 18, and Maria, 14, lived in a flat in the large family building shared with his mother, his siblings and their children.

A restless sleeper, he liked to draw late at night, after everyone else had gone to bed.

On 7 October 2023, that world collapsed. Following the Hamas attacks in Israel, the war arrived like "an earthquake that ravaged everything ... Since that date, our sole mission has become trying to survive," he said.

Over the past year, Baroud and his family have been displaced 12 times. Each move is more difficult than the last, as options and space in already overcrowded areas dwindle.

His story is a window into the new reality of life in Gaza, where 90% of the population have fled their homes-many, like the Baroud family, several times.

The artist has managed to keep drawing.

Sometimes pens and paper are lacking, sometimes he is too exhausted from searching for water and food, but when he can, he documents what his family has witnessed. The series, Still Alive, is "a way to keep communicating with the outside world".