Imad was killed in search of food for his kids. How much grief must Gaza families bear?

Tragedy is a relentless visitor in Gaza. Murder is no longer a surprise, but an expectation, even a norm - a vicious certainty in the beat of life under genocide. 

But even in its normalisation, the loss of a loved one cuts deeply, leaving wounds that words struggle to convey. 

The case of my aunt's neighbour, Imad Kaskin, killed in the ruins of a life displaced, is not an anomaly, but just one painful thread in Gaza’s tapestry of grief, where lives are erased amid global silence.

Until his death last month, 35-year-old Imad was a young man with a great sense of humour; one willing to give away what little he had, even though he was among the poorest of the poor. With his wife, Hadeel, and their two daughters, eight-year-old Retaj and six-year-old Dana, Imad lived with the quiet dignity of those who have mastered the art of endurance, what Palestinians call sumud.

In Gaza sumud takes on a million shapes and forms - shapes I doubt any other nation could imagine or has even known.

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