Gaza today is a graveyard. A dystopian landscape where thousands of people and millions of dreams lie buried under a once vibrant city, laid to waste by Israel’s genocidal war. Two years into the war that has killed more than 67,000 people, most of them women and children, TRT World tells the story of Gaza through four Palestinians – stories of struggle and survival, of death and destruction, and, above all, resistance and resilience.
This is the story of Sulaiman Al Farra, 38. Once a journalist, now an aid worker.
Sulaiman carries sacks of flour and tins of powdered milk through the ruins of Gaza. Amid rubble and tents, he delivers limited food and water, insisting that life must not be surrendered.
Before the war, he was a journalist, with a camera slung over his shoulder, chasing stories through ruins and grief. Today, he shoulders a different burden: keeping his people alive by running aid convoys and bread lines.
“I witnessed people’s pain, injuries, and suffering. Now I’ve shifted to humanitarian work. I stand with the people, support them, and help however I can,” he tells TRT World.
Nearly a million follow him on Instagram, where his bio reads, in all caps: “Have big dreams”. His feed has become his lifeline.
Some days he works with Türkiye’s Red Crescent, others with Jordanian relief convoys. Every day, he can be found somewhere new: a hospital, a displacement camp.
Alongside distributing food and supplies, he offers emotional support to those who have lost everything. For orphaned children, he becomes a brother or father figure; for his team, a motivator who lifts spirits and keeps them moving forward. Quietly, he stretches his limits each day, embodying the role of an unsung activist for Gaza.
“I was raised as an orphan,” he explains. “Those who’ve known hunger and loss feel the suffering of others in their bones.”
As a child, he promised himself to stand with those who have no one else. “That promise keeps me going.”
Sometimes, his work reaches beyond survival. “We try to give the children moments of joy,” Sulaiman says. “A few days ago, we organised a small event — juice, biscuits, noodles. Nothing fancy. But seeing their smiles... that happiness keeps me on this path. Until my last breath, I will stand with them — children, women, the elderly, everyone in need.”
Mornings without mornings
At dawn, Sulaiman wakes to the sharp insistence of his phone — aid workers calling, families in need. He rises from a thin mat, a single sip of water at his side, rising before the sun fully claims the sky.
With a towel draped around his neck, he heads to the water barrel in the yard, splashing his face awake. In the corner, his mother tends to a small fire, coaxing the flames to life. Together, they brew tea in a blackened kettle, its metal stained by countless mornings just like this one.
There is a brief moment of reprieve: a turtle wanders near the tents. He laughs with his young son. For a moment, joy. Then the phone rings again.
“There is nothing like a real morning anymore,” he says. “We sleep to the sound of air strikes and wake to the sound of air strikes. Even now, as I speak, you might hear warplanes overhead. There is no peace.”
Tent life has its own struggles. “In summer, it’s just a piece of fabric under the blazing sun. In winter, the cold and rain flood the tents completely. We don’t know how to survive.”
His wife, pregnant, cannot live with him there. “Life in the tents is unbelievably difficult, unbelievably harsh. No matter how much you try to clean, there is no real cleanliness.”
After dark, it feels like “sitting in fire or hell,” he says. “Nights in the tent are filled with fear, panic, and zero privacy. Even now, as I speak to you, my neighbour in the next tent can hear every single word. And on top of that, all night long we hear the sounds of shelling.”
He recalls one moment that still haunts him, an air strike near Nasser Hospital: “Everyone inside [the tent] was injured — except for me. I survived only because I was lying on my back alone when it happened. Life in the tent protects you from nothing.”
Noon: Racing against time
By midday, the camp in Al Mawasi hums with a tense urgency. Once farmland, now a sprawl of displaced families. Trucks unload sacks of flour and cans of powdered milk. Sulaiman moves fast, clipboard in hand.
Each parcel, he says, lasts a family about a week — oil, rice, canned food, the bare minimum to survive. But with every truck that comes in, the same questions haunt him: Will the crossings open tomorrow? Will supplies run out before the weekend?
Medicine is worse. “Even antibiotics are unavailable in Gaza today. Whether for the wounded, the sick, or anyone in need — nothing is available.”
He recalls how, before the blockade intensified, they would organise free medical days three times a week in the camps, offering medicine for women, children, the elderly, kidney patients, and diabetics. “But now we have been forced to stop.”
Outside, children run between the tents, their hands streaked with dust. A mother approaches Sulaiman asking for soap — a rare commodity these days. “Even a single bottle of shampoo,” Sulaiman says softly, “is like a treasure to them.”
But noon doesn’t pause. Another aid truck arrives, and Sulaiman is already moving toward it, and the second round of distribution begins.
Rushed evening struggles
As night falls, Sulaiman’s work only intensifies. The phone buzzes constantly — calls from his team, from families, from aid kitchens struggling to keep pace with hunger.
Before he sets out, he pauses to recite a prayer, sending blessings to his team: “May God protect you on the road.”
That evening, his team prepares around 800 parcels: pasta, rice, lentils, flour, syrup, and sugar. Baby formula remains scarce.
“This is the milk we were able to secure. God willing, we’ll distribute it to the children.” Some items, though modest, lift spirits: vermicelli, sesame oil, tea, yeast, cheese. “The children love vermicelli. It’s something nice for them,” he says with a brief smile.
Sulaiman reflects on how meals have turned into memories. “Before the war, life was abundant. shawarma, chicken, maqluba, stuffed grape leaves… Now, it’s just bread and cheese, maybe bread and tea. We miss the chicken most.”
The hardest moments are when demand outstrips supply. “Imagine arriving at a camp of 400 tents with only 200 parcels. How do you decide who eats and who doesn’t? We try to explain, to calm people, and promise to return. But the lack of resources makes it impossible.”
Still, he keeps moving. “I have chosen this path and will stay on it until the very end. Gaza deserves to come out of this catastrophe, this war, this destruction.”
‘Every night is worse than the one before it’
“There isn’t just one night of heavy bombing,” Suleiman says. “Every night is worse than the one before it.”
He fears not his own death, but the call that someone he loves has been killed. “It has happened before. I’ve been in the field when the news came — loved ones buried under the rubble.”
Then, his voice shifts, heavy with memory, three of the hardest moments still haunt him.
The first, a tank shell that hit his home. “It was the longest, most unbearable night of my life,” unable to reach his family, unsure who was alive.
The second, his brother’s house was bombed. Sulaiman was already volunteering at Nasser Hospital. “I didn’t know whether to run to the house or wait at the hospital. Then ambulances started arriving. My cousins, my nephews… injured. Then they said there were martyrs.”
The third, his closest friend journalist Mohammed Fayek was targeted. “When I got there, Mohammed was covered in blood, severely injured. They rushed him into intensive care. That was an extremely, extremely difficult moment.”
But beyond these shocks of war, Suleiman says the struggle continues.
“Today, my thoughts are only about how to survive the night — food, water, basic needs. On the way home, I think about buying wood, cardboard, anything for the fire, calling my mother so we can cook, then lighting the fire again after dinner just to heat water for a bath.”
“The entire night goes by like this. No time with my mother. No time with my wife. No time for life. Life itself has been taken from us.”
He contrasts the present with what was lost: “Before the war, we lived like we were in paradise. Everything was available — food, water, money, work, a home. I had a car, a house. My wife’s house was like a palace. We were happy. We had everything.”
When a ceasefire briefly held, he visited what was once his home, hoping to find it standing. Instead, he found nothing but rubble, a heap of stones.
“I wished I could find even one thing left from my home, one small memory, but I couldn’t. Even the clothes I had hoped to recover were gone. Not a single keepsake, not a nail, not a screw, nothing at all could be saved. Everything was destroyed.”
And yet, he insists on hope: “God willing, we will have the strength, the patience, the determination, and the will to rebuild. We will rebuild the house. Not just the house — we will rebuild Gaza. We will make Gaza more beautiful, stronger, and better than before.”
