A GAZAN teacher who taught thousands of children in displacement camps has told of a lost generation whose trauma cannot be healed.

Asma Mustafa said she worked tirelessly trying to stop the 15-month genocide robbing youngsters of their innocence.

But the 38-year-old became tearful as she admitted that not even her daughters Sondus, eight, and Sarah, nine, were left unscathed.

Speaking to the Morning Star from a displacement camp, the single mother was preparing to return and set up her tent by the rubble of her destroyed home in Jabalia.

She said: “I managed to teach 2,000 children in eight displacement camps or shelters.

“Every time I used to look in my children’s eyes, my students, in the shelters or in displacement camps… I believed that they should have a better life.

“I gathered them in order to listen to them, I listen to their stories — they are full of pain — I gave time to them to make friendship, they build a good relationship with each other and this lifts the negativity inside them.

“Sometimes I noticed that they were very violent, according to what they had witnessed.

“They are traumatised and I noticed when they talked to each other they spoke very loudly, there’s no calm voice coming out from inside them.

“I tried to take this negative energy out of them but still every day they got this because they are witnessing the same trauma every day.

“You taught something and they have another problem. They have acquired the language of the older people. The children are like adults. 

“Some of my children decided to make small rings and the small necklaces… jewellery — they created opportunities for themselves from nothing.

“I saw those children are not children any more, they became older than you can imagine.

“The children of Gaza are not like children around the world.”

Asma, who is divorced, continued: “My daughters were completely innocent and still are but in some points they think criticially as if they are as old as me.

“Once they were visiting their father and the building exactly next to them was bombed.”

An hour passed until her daughters finally picked up the phone.

“I was very, very scared… my daughter used the sentence I used to tell them, I always said: ‘It’s very far away, mama, don’t be scared.’

“They said this and were laughing, I realised then my children are not children any more.”

The award-winning English teacher Asma remembers the exact moment her family was displaced on October 19 2023.

Staying with friends until a nearby building was bombed, she moved again to a shelter in a former school library in the Al-Fukhari area in southern Gaza.

She became inspired to teach displaced children there.

“I wanted to keep them in good health, psychologically,” she said. “Playing with children and telling them stories every day.”

But she was forced to move again following warnings from the Israeli military, and left for the west of Rafah on January 4 2024.

“The first day in the tent was very hard for all of us. In the middle of of winter, it was very cold and at the same time it was like a desert, I thought for a while I may die here because I couldn’t bear living like this,” she said.

But she continued teaching, and said: “I bought them some toys, we played group activities… we did many many amazing things but I wasn’t comfortable because we were all surrounded by fear from everywhere.

“Even the tents were targeted and displaced people in them were burned — this was awful.”

She told of seeing one of her students, nine-year-old Jana, killed in an air strike as she sold bread on the street.

“She was shy and saying ‘I’m working just like you, I love my family and providing them with money to survive,’” said Asma.

“She said, ‘I have learnt from you to live life and to be a strong woman.’ 

“When she left me I kept looking at her and I was very happy she was imitating her teacher but she disappeared.

“I couldn’t hear the sound of bombing, I could only see blood around her and only found the peieces of bread fully covered in blood. There was nobody for her, nobody, just like the others.”

She was forced to move again, and after 10 days in Deir al-Balah, again, to Nuseirat refugee camp where she has remained.

“Everything changed” after the ceasefire agreement, she said.

“When I spent my first night without aeroplanes it was like a gift and my heartbeat changed.

“I’m getting back step by step to normal life. 

“I want to kiss the remains of my destroyed house. It’s the warmest place ever.

“OK, I have nothing, but I love where I belong and where I grew up and my memories there.”