We in Gaza who survived the war will finally grieve – and we will begin again.

The missiles have stopped here in Gaza. But our war is far from over. The real war – the one against grief, destruction and despair – has just begun.

Around 70,000 people were killed in the past two years. Thousands are still buried beneath the rubble. We don’t even know all their names. These aren’t just numbers. These are entire families erased, students who will never return to school.

On Oct. 9, I was in our small apartment in northern Gaza, in the Al-Rimal neighborhood, where my family and I have been living since IDF soldiers destroyed our original home. I had just finished making tea and was preparing for an exam – one I had to take online, despite everything.

Then my sister Huda, 21, was awakened by a phone call. Her friend told her the ceasefire would begin at noon. The whole house erupted – some of us laughed, some of us cried, and all of us dared to hope, if only for a moment. My 10-year-old brother Abedrahim danced around the room shouting, “The genocide is over! We’ll finally eat chicken!”

But my mother remained cautious. “God help us,” she said. “They will bomb us heavily before the ceasefire begins.” And she was right. That morning became one of the bloodiest yet.

We will rebuild. We owe it to those who didn’t survive.

Even amid that fragile joy, we were grieving. We grieved for our home. We grieved for the people we lost. We grieved because we had survived, and survival comes with its own weight.

I walked through the ruins of Al-Rimal to find a cafe with internet access so I could submit my exam. The streets were unrecognizable. Shops were flattened. Homes were piles of ash and steel.

During the war, we buried our loved ones and kept moving. We were in survival mode. We had no time to mourn. We were too busy figuring out where to find water, how to secure food, whether we’d be bombed at any moment.

The war is over – but the funerals are only beginning. The mourning we were denied is here now, and we feel the weight of every name, every face we’ve lost. The silence screams louder than the missiles ever did.

Gaza lies in ruin. We have no hospitals, no schools, no universities. I was a first-year student before this genocide. I only experienced university life for one-and-a-half weeks. Now I’m studying online, like many others, but how can a screen replace the laughter of classmates, the smell of the library, the dream of a future?

We will rebuild. We must. We owe it to those who didn’t survive.

This ceasefire marks the end of bombs, tanks and war jets but the beginning of our greatest test: the war of rebuilding. Rebuilding our homes, our schools, our hospitals, our lives. Rebuilding our hope, our dignity, our strength. Rebuilding a future in a place that has tried to kill us over and over again.

The real war is now: The war of healing. Of remembering. Of refusing to forget. Of restarting. Of chasing our dreams. Survival is not the end – it’s our beginning.

ALI SKAIK is a writer and college student in Gaza City. A longer version of this story first appeared in The Nation.