\n<\/p>\n
It is almost over, the end so close they can practically feel the keys they have kept all these months sliding into the locks of their old homes, the doorknobs turning in their hands, the beds they will sink into for their first night\u2019s peaceful rest in more than 15 months \u2014 their own beds. Just a couple more days to go.<\/p>\n
Two nights before the first stage of a cease-fire in Gaza was announced<\/a>, Layan al-Mohtaseb, 15, dreamed of being back in her bedroom in Gaza City, cleaning it as she used to before her family fled during the war.<\/p>\n \u201cThis time, it feels like we\u2019re truly going home,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n That may be true only for those whose homes are still standing after months of destruction. And there is always a chance the fighting might resume after the six-week initial truce if talks over a permanent one collapsed. But across Gaza, people were daydreaming of the first moments of peace, the people they would hug as soon as the truce took hold, the graves<\/a> they would visit. They already knew they would be shedding tears, tears they hardly knew whether to attribute to joy or to grief.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n If Wednesday night was for celebrating the news that a cease-fire deal had been struck, the following days were for making preparations. As the Israeli security cabinet convened to vote on the cease-fire and hostage release agreement on Friday, Palestinians were calling around for trucks they could rent to move their things back to northern Gaza, or vans, or even donkey carts; they were packing up their tents, wondering where they would live if their houses were no longer<\/a> there.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Fedaa al-Rayyes, 40, was already buying ingredients to make small festive sweets to welcome the war\u2019s end. But the first thing she planned to do when the bombs and drones fell silent was to search for relatives she hadn\u2019t seen in months, to find out who was still alive and to mourn for those who did not live to see this day.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s impossible to describe this mix of relief and grief,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m happy we survived and grateful for the kind people who helped us. Yet, I\u2019m deeply sad \u2014 sad for the relatives and friends we lost and for the neighborhood we\u2019ll return to without them.\u201d<\/p>\n There were practical matters to think of, too. She would remind her children to \u201cstay away from anything that might still be dangerous or explosive,\u201d she said \u2014 from all the unexploded ordnance littering Gaza that could keep adding to the war\u2019s casualty count, one accidental blast at a time, for months or years<\/a> to come.<\/p>\n Most of Gaza\u2019s population of more than two million people have had to huddle into tents<\/a> and schools and other people\u2019s apartments for much of the war, driven by Israel\u2019s airstrikes and evacuation orders from their houses or the earlier shelters they had tried. Now they could think of little else but going home. Even if those homes were damaged. Even if they were now no more than rubble and ash.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Manal Silmi, 34, a psychologist for an international aid group, planned first to go hug her mother and her siblings and \u201ccry, letting out all the pain we\u2019ve carried for these 15 months,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Then the trek home could begin. Per the agreement, people displaced from northern Gaza to the south will be allowed<\/a> to return on the seventh day after the cease-fire takes effect on Sunday. Her family was already looking for a big van to drive all their tents and bedding back up north. Her friends and the few relatives she had left in Gaza City had already called, making plans to meet them at the crossing point dividing northern and southern Gaza.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ll hug, we\u2019ll cry and we\u2019ll thank God over and over for surviving this war,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Al-Hassan al-Harazeen, 23, a college senior majoring in computer science, knew his family\u2019s house in eastern Gaza City was in ruins, he said. But he would still head straight there as soon as the cease-fire began.<\/p>\n He was imagining spray-painting his family\u2019s name on any brick that was still in one piece, picturing himself sitting on the rubble for a while, he said, \u201cto embrace those broken stones and bricks as if they\u2019re a part of me.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Then he would visit the grave where they had buried his grandfather at the start of the war to recite the opening verses of the Quran for him.<\/p>\n Even as mediators announced the deal on Wednesday, Israel was still heavily bombing Gaza. Two of Jamal Mortaja\u2019s employees from the solar-panel business he owned before the war were killed the day before. They would be in his thoughts, said Mr. Mortaja, 65, when he headed back to Gaza City to visit what remained of his home before checking on his stores at the al-Ansar roundabout.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Raed al-Gharabli, too, wanted to return to Gaza City, despite his home\u2019s destruction, just to say goodbye before the rubble was removed. He wanted to walk through his neighborhood, Shuja\u2019iyya, greeting neighbors who had stuck it out<\/a> all these long months. He would take his makeshift tent from the central Gaza city of Deir al Balah, where he had fled with his family, and set it up next to the ruins of his house.<\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t wait to see this moment become real,\u201d said Mr. al-Gharabli, 48, a tailor. \u201cIf I could, I\u2019d fly straight north and land on the rubble of my home.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n To speed things up, he said his family would leave some belongings with neighbors in Deir al Balah, where they and other displaced people had come to trust and rely on people who had been total strangers at the war\u2019s beginning.<\/p>\n There was even a part of them that was already nostalgic for it, the camaraderie that had formed between them and their temporary neighbors.<\/p>\n After his home in the southern city of Khan Younis was destroyed, Ismail al-Sheikh, 39, a university lecturer, had moved to a tent nearby, where he got to know two men in nearby tents. The new friends spent their evenings reminiscing about life before Oct. 7, 2023, when the war began, and imagining aloud what would happen once the nightmare was over. What they would do. Where they would go.<\/p>\n For Mr. al-Sheikh, who taught at al-Aqsa University, the daydreams were nothing crazy. He just wanted his normal life back, teaching his classes, meeting up with friends at night at the Titanic Restaurant in Khan Younis. The Titanic, which he\u2019d heard had collapsed into rubble.<\/p>\n Now, with the war nearing its close, his new friends were getting ready to return to Gaza City, where they were from.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI\u2019ll deeply miss those gatherings,\u201d Mr. al-Sheikh said. \u201cIt\u2019s truly a mix of emotions \u2014 happiness for their return, sadness for the farewells and hope for what lies ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n