On the afternoon of 7 October, Nour Shahtout was busy doing her homework, when she received a text message from school, telling students not to come in the next day. She hasn’t been back since. “At the time, I thought I had the day off and could hang out with my friends,” says the 18-year-old. “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 Israeli 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 ICT and business at Al-Azhar University. “But the following month, the IDF destroyed that too,” she says.
