"At the time, I thought I had the day off and could hang out with my friends," says the 18-yearold. "Little did I know, everything was about to change."
Two weeks later, Shahtout's family home in Tel al-Hawa, a neighbourhood in the south of Gaza City, was bombed in an Istaeli airstrike. "We had only 10 minutes to evacuate," she recalls. "I grabbed my laptop, charger and as many books as I could fit into my bag." Shahtout, a high-achieving student, had plans to study information and communications technology and business at al-Azhar University. "But the following month, the IDF destroyed that too," she says.
The family evacuated to Khan Younis but the bombs followed. Over the next few months, they moved from one tent to the next, fled one city to the next, until they realised there was no safe place left in the Gaza Strip. After selling everything they owned to pay for their passage out, the family crossed into Egypt in March, like about 100,000 other Palestinians who have been able to get out of Gaza since the start of the conflict.
"I don't like it here, I miss my friends and I want to go home," says Shahtout, sitting cross-legged on a worn blue rug in the one-bedroom apartment shared by two families. "I am stuck in this one room all day, where there is no space or privacy," she adds. "I want to study and complete my degree but life has come to a standstill."
The small living room serves as a bedroom for Shahtout, her parents and two brothers, with two large sofas, a table and a battered mattress leaning against one of the walls; Shahtout's school books are piled in one corner.
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