Today is Refaat Alareer’s birthday.

It has been ten months since I lost my mentor and dear friend. I was with him on December 6, walking along the open road when he told me that he was tired of this war. A few hours later, he was killed in an Israeli airstrike along with his brother, sister, and four of his nephews.

A firm believer in the adage, the pen is mightier than the sword, no one knew Israel would deploy a missile to counter his wide-ranging tweets during the war. Five months later on April 26, his daughter, son-in-law, and their newborn baby were killed in a similar airstrike.

If he were alive today, I would not be writing this. Instead, I would be asked to join him at al-Qalaq, a simple but popular eatery along the shoreline near the iconic al-Khalidi Mosque, which was bombed on November 8. Al-Qalaq is known locally for having only a single item on its menu, crab. The word “Qalaq” ironically translates to “worry,” but in Gaza, it holds a much deeper and uniquely local meaning, embodying several ideas in a single word that is integral to daily life in Gaza.

Or if he were experiencing another busy day at work teaching English literature at the Islamic University of Gaza, we would meet at Ristretto Café nearby. We would have been celebrating his birthday, singing him songs while he was glued to his phone as always, writing a tweet, reading an article, talking to a mentee, or coming up with a new idea for a meme. Or maybe all of them at once.

If the war hadn’t happened, the children and university students would be coming back to their classes right now, and Refaat would be preparing course materials for them. He would inspire his students to write stories about their history and homeland, to amplify the voices of their grandparents who never got a chance to learn to read or write after the forcible expulsion from their homes in 1948.

Refaat would have either been busy at work reading, tweeting simple but powerful thoughts, volunteering for a good cause somewhere, or finding time to sit with his eldest daughter, Shaymaa, and play with his newborn grandson, Abdulrahman. I am wondering what he would be doing with his grandchild. Refaat’s actions were always unpredictable.

He was always our guide and mentor, and maybe that’s what frightened them — that the young generation would have someone close who taught them how to wield their pens against the occupation, to expose its crimes and resist its racist apartheid system by any means possible.

From challenging Israeli hasbara to pointing out its glaring double standards, Refaat’s writings were laced with humor, wit, and the occasional biting commentary that was hard to ignore. His accounts were restricted several times on social media platforms, which tried to suppress his reach, but he fought the bans and each time redoubled his determination to expose the crimes of the occupation. He never hesitated to amplify the voices of those who spoke the truth and to expose those who appeared friendly but were, in fact, deceitful.

If Refaat were alive right now, he would be taking care of us. I will never forget his gesture just three days before I lost him. Refaat came over to my home when he heard my grandmother had passed. Our house in al-Shujaiya was still largely intact at the time, while he was displaced and moving between a school shelter and other people’s homes. He came over on foot to say to me: I am always here for you. I am by your side.

So instead of telling you how much we miss him and the type of friend he was, I will continue to visit others and try to lift their spirits when they’re alone. I’ll encourage them to hold their heads high and endure like he did in his lifetime.

I am still living and need to try telling his story. If his house had not been levelled to the ground, I would have sold some things, bought piece of cloth and some string and given it to an orphaned child who misses his father. I would have asked him to fly it to give him a moment of hope. Instead, on many occasions, I have been that child myself, looking up the sky, trying to find hope amidst the rising smoke, surveillance drones, and fighter jets.

Dear Refaat, I miss you so much, my brother.

Asem Alnabih is an engineer and PhD researcher from Gaza. He currently works for the Gaza City Municipality, serving as its official spokesperson, a member of its emergency committee, and the Director of Public Relations and Media.