Reuniting the Class of Gaza: How War Scattered and Scarred a High School Photograph

Nuseirat, Gaza Strip — Maha Taha fills the old blackboard with equations and sets her students to work. For the next few minutes, the classroom settles into the scratch of pens and the low murmur of girls working through the problems. Maha, 43, has taught mathematics for 20 years. Dressed in an olive-green jalabeya and beige hijab, she steps quietly to her desk at the side of the room, as her students work through the maths problems. She has watched generations of girls pass through her classroom, preparing for exams and applying to universities. Asked about the girls she taught before the October 7 genocide began, Maha pauses before reaching for her phone. While scrolling back to find a photograph taken in June 2023, she speaks softly, so as not to disturb the girls in the classroom.

Maha Taha, 43, has taught mathematics at Muscat Secondary School for Girls for 20 years. In June 2023, she posed for a selfie with 15 of her pupils. Three years later, she still keeps the photograph on her phone. “I was proud of them,” she says. “I could see that they had bright futures ahead of them. They were very special in their personalities, even before it came to their studies. But October 7 changed the course of their lives.”

In the photo, 15 teenage girls in navy school robes and white scarves crowd around Maha in the schoolyard. Some have their arms around one another; others lean towards the camera. All are smiling. They had just finished their mock exams and wanted a photograph together. Sara Rayan took it, holding out the phone so everyone fit in the frame. The girls were 17 and 18. Like many teenagers their age, they worried about exams and university places, talked about what they wanted to become, and imagined the lives that lay ahead. Four months later, Israel's war on Gaza began. Three years on, one of the girls in the photograph has been killed in an Israeli air strike. Four have left Gaza. Others have been displaced — their education interrupted and their plans for the future upended.

Al Jazeera set out to find the 15 girls, to discover what had happened to them and the futures they once imagined, and to see whether they could be brought together again for a photograph in the same schoolyard. Muscat Secondary School is still standing, although it was struck by artillery in February 2024 and became a shelter for displaced families. Some classrooms still bear the marks of the war: holes left by quadcopter gunfire, windows damaged by shelling and soot stains where families cooked over open fires. On the walls, children have drawn kites, flowers and a Palestinian flag. Some have written their names: Haya, Marah, Mohammed and Khaled.

Displaced families still shelter in parts of the school, while a tent at the edge of the yard serves as a makeshift classroom for younger pupils whose own school can no longer accommodate them. It's just past 10am on a Thursday in late September when Yasmin Abu Zaid arrives. Then Aya Adnan arrives, quickening her pace when she sees Yasmin and pulling her into an embrace. “I haven’t seen you for three years,” she says. “Where have you been? You never show up.” Lina Yunis Abd al-Qader arrives a few minutes later, carrying a plastic bag of books for Aya’s younger sister, who is preparing for the Tawjihi, Gaza’s national secondary school graduation exams.

Aya and Lina have seen each other since leaving school. Their families have been friends for years, and they still live in the same neighbourhood of Nuseirat. But Yasmin, who once lived nearby, was displaced early in the war. With the fighting making it difficult to meet, neither has seen her for three years. The three have also kept in touch with Ghaida Zaqout, who now lives in Egypt. Together, they have a private WhatsApp group where they chat regularly and check on one another.

When Maha finishes teaching, she greets "my girls" with arms wide open. They erupt into chatter, talking over one another and trying to catch up. In time, Maha pulls up the old photograph on her phone. The girls huddle around her, then point at the tree behind them, recognising it from the photograph. Now, they begin recalling the school days they shared. There were the ordinary intimacies of teenage friendship: who would lend you a pen, who would explain homework you didn't understand, who whispered through lessons and who worried for days about an exam.

"These are my girls," she says again. Ghaida was the girl whose laughter could be heard before she entered the classroom, and who rarely stopped talking, even when teachers moved her to another desk. Sara and her twin sister Fatima were forever taking selfies, while Lina al-Hour was quieter, often bringing novels to read during breaks. The girls talked about clothes, television programmes and football. They bought food together during breaks and wondered aloud about university and what they might become. Some dreamed of studying medicine; another wanted to design buildings. Their futures still seemed to turn on exams, marks, university places and what their families could afford.

Maha remembers Sara Rayan laughing, and Ghaida, she says, is in Egypt now, studying dentistry. Then, she reaches Lina al-Hour. Here, she pauses, enlarges Lina’s face on the screen and falls silent. Her smile has disappeared. When she speaks again, her voice is quieter and catches slightly. “This is my well-mannered student, Lina,” she says softly. “She is a martyr.” On November 17, 2023, Lina was killed in an Israeli air strike. She was 18. For a moment, the girls wrap their arms even tighter around one another in silence. The photograph stays open on her phone.