Nour Abo Aisha: Teacher, Survivor
"It’s not the children’s fault that their greatest hope is simply to live long enough for the famine to end so they can eat meat.”
“That answer shattered me. It’s not the children’s fault that their greatest hope is simply to live long enough for the famine to end so they can eat meat.” - Nour Abo Aisha, writing for Mondoweiss
Yesterday was the last day of school. At my school, students cleaned out their desks, teachers took posters off the walls, and everyone from the youngest junior kindergartener to the tireless office administrator was thinking to the future. Emotions, both positive and negative were high, tears were shed, and we all took our next steps out of this chapter.
But while everything around me pointed forward—while the very air tickled my skin with the allure of freedom—I couldn’t stop thinking of Gaza.
I couldn’t stop thinking about Gaza’s children. I couldn’t stop thinking of Gaza’s parents and teachers and office administrators. And I couldn’t stop thinking of Nour Abo Aisha.
Nour is freelance writer, student of English literature, and former volunteer teacher at Gaza’s al-Nasr school in Gaza City. I encountered her earlier in the week through an article she wrote for Mondoweiss: “I survived a massacre at a school in Gaza. My students did not.” In the article, Nour recounts the horrors that played out when Israel attacked her school last August.
It was August 4, 2024 at the end of the school day. She had just stepped out of the school building into its garden to decompress from the long day. She saw some of her students playing nearby and told them to head on home to their families; the day was over. Minutes later, airstrikes began raining down on al-Nasr.
As the title of her article suggests, while Nour survived that day (by a miracle her principal later said, as she was only 600 metres away) many of her students were killed, “their small, fragile bodies…flung into the sky.” At east 30 people, mostly women and children, were killed that day in what has since been called the al-Nasr school massacre.
But when Nour wrote for Mondoweiss almost a year later, she didn’t begin with al-Nasr. She began by reminding us of Ward Sheikh Khalil, the young girl who escaped from the fires of the al-Jerjawi school massacre just this past May. Ward, who got significant media coverage after being found alive (less in the West), is another ‘miracle’ survivor like Nour: she survived the fires which consumed the school, killing 36 people including her mother and two siblings.
The cruel truth is that the massacre Ward escaped is only one of many, many such school massacres that Nour could have written about. As centres of the community and oftentimes UN facilities, schools and their surroundings have become vital places of shelter for the two million displaced Gazans. While the structured school system has been destroyed for over a year now, volunteers like Nour continue however they can to teach students who are desperate to learn. And yet, despite it being a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law, Israel continues to consistently attack schools using the same flimsy and irrelevant justifications it always uses. This is what impunity looks like: students blown through the walls of their places of learning.
This is what I think about as the final bell rings, as my students rush to their parents and begin dumping their folders in the trash, as the warm summer sun speaks softly of beaches and bike rides and late nights. I ask them what they’ll do this summer, how they feel about moving up a grade, if they’ll miss their classmates until they see them in the fall. There’s a sparkle in their eyes, even the ones who reply ‘I don’t know,’ because it’s an uncertainty let loose in a sea of opportunities.
The ‘I don’t know’ of Gaza’s children is ‘I don’t know if I’ll eat today.’ ‘I don’t know if I’ll see my grandfather again.’ ‘I don’t know what life is like without bombs falling.’
Nour writes:
“While I was volunteering at al-Nasr School as an English teacher and children’s entertainer, I decided to dedicate one class to psychological relief—an opportunity to simply listen to the students…I asked each student, “What do you want to be in the future?”
I expected answers like, “I want to be an engineer,” but their responses were heartbreaking, unlike the dreams of children elsewhere in the world.
One five-year-old student, Aya al-Dalu, told me, “When I grow up, I will eat rice with a lot of meat.”
What can we say to five-year-old Aya? What can we say to Ward? What can we say to the children of Gaza whose only sparkle comes from the flames of incendiary weapons reflected in their tears? What can we say to Nour, who reaches out in compassion over and over only to be blown back by the airstrikes which fall around her? I have no words that will help them—certainly none that will nourish them like rice with a lot of meat.
But I have words for myself, and for you:
What are you going to do this summer?
With your heart: “Lord, you promise a hope and a future, but as the children and communities of Gaza die by bombs, bullets, and enforced salvation, we cannot see any future through the veil of our tears. We lament: where is the future for Nour’s students, killed in their classrooms? Trusting in your unfailing love we pray that you empower the hands of the world choke the flow of weapons and tear down the walls of occupation. Hold Nour and her students in your safe embrace. Guide our steps toward justice.”
With your voice: Toronto Palestinian Families has organized a letter writing campaign to the TDSB to ensure Palestinian students and allies are supported and protected in the coming school year. Send a letter here.
Sign the parliamentary petition to end the Free trade agreement between Canada and Israel here.
Many MPS will be returning to their constituencies this summer. Consider booking a face-to-face meeting with yours to share your concerns about Israel's genocide and Canada's role in stopping it. Find your MP here.
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Nour also writes with We Are Not Numbers, the writing collective founded by Dr. Refaat Alareer, one of the first neighbours we met here at Imago Palestina. Her writing includes:
“Silhouetted by fire, six-year-old girl survives Israeli attack in Gaza” at Al Jazeera, May 27, 2025
“Children among those killed after Israel bombs two schools in Gaza” at Al Jazeera, August 4, 2024