How Long Can You Pause a Life Before It Disappears? My Journey from Graduation to Ground Zero

By Malak Radwan

I was twenty-two when I graduated from the Islamic University of Gaza, clutching my degree in English Literature and Translation like a promise—a passport to a future where words would be my refuge, my weapon, my bridge. But war has a way of rewriting destinies in ash. Two months later, the bombs began falling, and the only thing louder than the explosions was the silence of deferred dreams.

January 2024, the northern skyline of Gaza was a jagged sketch of broken…