Khan Younis, Gaza – From a regular kitchen with sand on the floor and a nylon roof, lacking basic equipment, Mayess Hamid prepared Christmas cakes this year.
Hamid, 31, has been making cakes and pastries for nearly 10 years, working at one of the largest cake shops in Gaza before it was destroyed in Israel's ongoing war against the besieged enclave.
Like many Gazans, he lost his job when a bakery was bombed.
“I wanted to start the year with hope and make Christmas cakes to distribute to the children around me in the camp,” he says while scratching.
“The war changed our lives. I ran out of money, and my house was destroyed,” says Hamid, who has moved six times since his family left Zeitoun, east of Gaza City, and is now settled in al-Mawasi in Khan Younis, south of the Gaza Strip.
“My children are happy, they are waiting eagerly and trying to help, especially with the decorations,” she adds, arranging the cakes on a baking tray.
Making cakes was difficult because of the famine which has become so bad that parts of Gaza are starving.
Israel has severely restricted the entry of aid and commercial goods since the beginning of the war.
Based on his experience, he replaces the unavailable with the available.
“Before the war, I used to decorate cakes with sugar paste. Now, I use a mixture of liquid cheese and powdered sugar, and it works,” he says.
With no Christmas cookie cutters, Hamid drew a pattern on paper using his phone, cut it out, and made the dough by hand with a knife.
“Even small tasks like baking cakes have become difficult during the war,” he says, preparing cakes and preparing to cook them in the nearby clay oven that the entire camp relies on.
From gathering the ingredients to making the flour and baking, each step is unique and difficult.
While the second batch of cookies is baking, Hamid begins to decorate the first one inside his small tent.
“The war may have taken my home and my life as I knew it, but not my aesthetic sense and attention to detail,” she says, looking around her tidy tent.
While trying to bring cheer to the refugee camp, Hamid cannot hide his sadness that the world celebrates Christmas as usual, while Gaza endures a second year of war and destruction.
“We try to smile, but our wounds get bigger, and there is little we can do. We feel that we have been forgotten.”
At the same time, they still cling to the hope that Christmas will bring peace. His only wish for Christmas is for the war to end.
“Just stop this fight. “Killing and destruction must stop so that we can live in peace with our children,” he says.