'I'm scared, Mariam' - Dispatches from my nine-year-old sister in Gaza

As I sit safely in my flat in Kafir Al-Sheikh in Egypt, my nine-year-old sister, the youngest of our five siblings, has found phone reception. She quickly sends me a message, as the sound of airstrikes reverberate around what remains of our family home in Nuseirat.

Zaina, or Zanzoona as we affectionately call her, was born during an Israeli attack in 2014. My mother was pregnant with her during the 51-day war, when our education was paused and our safety sacrificed - just a small taste of what was to follow 10 years later.

Her message tells me how she feels as the shells fall around her.

I'm scared Mariam, I'm scared my hair, my face, my hands, my dreams will be burned from a bomb or from shrapnel from a rocket.

I replied telling her that she was going to be OK. That this war will end. That I was proud of her strength.

But she's only nine - she shouldn't be filled with nightmares of death and burned bodies.

No childhood

Here in Gaza, Zaina writes, children have forgotten their age.

They are the ones selling water or canned food in the streets, in dirty clothes with no mothers left to wash them; with empty bellies, no fathers left to feed them.

Zaina wants to help these children, displaced now in our neighbourhood and sleeping along the broken streets. My mother makes her bottles of karkadeh, a hibiscus drink that is diluted in water. Zaina takes bottles full to sell in the street with her new neighbours, then uses the money to buy whatever item they are selling.

She writes to me that night: They carry hardship on their shoulders Mariam, I'm trying to help the children. I wish someone was there to help us too.

Zaina once loved to spend her time playing. Anything. Football, riding her bike, martial arts, painting, making dresses for her dolls.

She now plays hajlah, a game popular with people in camps - it's a bit like hide and seek. But games are no longer endless. Now she scrambles to return home to make sure my mother and father are still there, and that she has some level of safety.

One of her entries is about how broken she feels. How can my baby sister carry all these feelings? It's easier for her to express herself through writing than it is for her to openly speak it.

On October 7, my heart was full of fire from my anger. ‏I'm sick and there is no medicine to make me all right, I can't be silent anymore.

Since the beginning of the war, Zaina has joined an estimated 658,000 school aged children in losing their childhood little by little.

It's little things that now bring her a residue of joy.

Mariam, today I went with Baba to the market and he bought the last four tomatoes from the stall. He spent 30 dollars on tomatoes!

He said Zaina, now you can have a salad. We were all so happy. I miss food. I miss sleep. I miss peace.

Dealing with trauma

Recently, my mother told me that Zaina has acquired bad habits due to fear and the sounds of explosions. In the broken remains of our family home, she will only sleep with my mother.

She has started to bite her nails, the ones she would once beg me to paint in shades of pink and lilac. Joyful Zaina now screams loudly when angry, and sleeps shrunken from fear that a rocket will explode her small body.

All of Gaza's children start their life hearing the sound of missiles, and some receive their death certificate before a birth certificate. Gaza's Ministry of Health reported more than 700 babies have been killed by this war. Many more are born orphans.

Life is scary now and our roofs are falling on our heads. Every time an airstrike happens, we are terrified. Every time we try to cope, our rooms shake, and then our hearts shake too in fear for our families.

All we think about is where the next airstrike will be. Our mothers tell us that the noise is far away, but we know that it is close.

We know that other children around the world live quiet and peaceful lives. While other children dream of video games, we dream that these battles will end one day. We hope that one day we will be able to open our books again and write in our school books and study, and that we will be able to go out and play with friends.

Attempts to survive

Zaina tells me through the garbled video call that she is trying to write and draw.

She has lived through displacement like all Gaza children, their faces hollowed from a lack of food, and their stomachs aching from hunger.

I miss chicken, any chicken, I miss hot, cheesy pasta. But I have my imagination. And the stale bread I eat, or the water I sip, I imagine it to be a hundred different types of food. Sometimes it works and I can taste the dishes I dream about.

My Zaina is resilient, like all the children of Gaza are forced to be. Last night she wrote to me saying:

I made a dress for my doll to protect her from the winter. I wish I could do the same for the children in the tents and on the streets.