She Wanted to Write, Not Die: The Story of Wala Jumaa Al-Efranji

In the heart of Al-Nuseirat refugee camp in Gaza, where alleys twist like the lines of a tired palm, Wala Jumaa Al-Efranji was writing. She didn’t write to be famous — she wrote to remain. To leave a trace in the memory of a land too familiar with erasure.

Wala, a writer and quiet activist, was killed on December 25, 2024, in a brutal Israeli airstrike on the camp. In that single moment, her life ended — and so did her husband’s. Alongside their bodies, the home they had built with patience and whispers was turned to ash.

She had dreams , small, tender, and deeply human. A shared table. A modest home filled with books. A future.

She once wrote: “People in Gaza start from below zero. Every day, they try to make something that looks like life — despite everything.”

She Was Still Trying to Live

Wala wasn’t loud. She didn’t appear on screens or march with banners. But she was intensely present in Gaza’s silences — the kind of presence you feel in the small things. A child waiting at a school gate. A mother planting basil in a cracked flowerpot. A day passing by without incident, and that alone being a miracle.

In one of her writings, she said: “We live here like plants against a wall. No one sees us. Still, we try to grow.” She and her husband were preparing for something small: a future. A little reading room for children. A quiet home. A life. But in one breath — it was all gone.The home. The husband. The vision.

All She Had Were Her Words

“I only have words,” she once wrote. Words were her shield — fragile, honest, persistent.

She believed they could hold what grief tried to erase. One friend wrote after her death: “Wala didn’t carry a weapon. She carried a heart that wrote. And that was enough to make her a target.”

She wasn’t looking to be remembered as a martyr. She just wanted to be remembered at all.

Gaza Has Lost One Who Told Its Stories

With Wala’s death, Gaza lost more than a life. It lost an archive of small truths that never made headlines. She didn’t write slogans. She wrote stories. She didn’t want to be a hero — she just wanted to survive.

Weeks before she was killed, she wrote: “Sometimes I dream of a small house, with an open window and peace. No sirens. No headlines. No power cuts. Just peace. How strange that peace has become a dream.” That dream was shelled. The window was shattered, The hearts inside silenced forever.

The Farewell That Was Never Said

We don’t know if Wala felt the end coming. But we know she wasn’t ready to leave. No one who writes about life expects to die mid-sentence. She was planting words in dry soil — hoping something might bloom.

Now all we can do is read what remains of her, and promise not to forget.

“If everything ends, don’t forget I was just trying to love this life. Despite everything.”

Alaa Alburai, Kufi Productions