Khaled was not a soldier. He had never held a rifle. He had never thrown a stone. But he had fought a war every day of his life, a war for bread.
At 48 years old, Khaled was a baker. Before the war, he owned a small shop in Jabalia Camp, where the smell of warm dough and sesame filled the narrow alleyways at sunrise. Every morning, his sons helped him knead, flatten, and bake hundreds of round loaves of taboon bread in their backyard oven, a family business passed down from his father, and his father before him.
To Khaled, bread was not only food. It was heritage. It was pride. It was survival.
But in Gaza, even bread has become a battlefield.