His camera carried Gaza’s joy: Remembering Yahya Barzaq

I write these words with trembling hands. Words are too fragile to carry Gaza's grief, and there are simply not enough to describe the brightness of the prominent cameraman, Yahya Barzaq, who was killed today.

His departure tore something inside me. He was not just another name or face in Gaza's endless list of tragedies. More than a colleague, he was my friend who felt like my brother.

We worked on many projects together for the BBC, chasing stories in the most impossible circumstances, finding angles that portrayed some light in a land constantly overshadowed by death. Yahya and I often joked that we weren't just journalists, but stubborn dreamers, people who refused to let Gaza's story be erased.

We understood each other in a way that went beyond the work we produced. When deadlines felt impossible and danger surrounded us, he would flash his quiet smile and say, "don't worry, we will get it done." And we always did.

That is why losing him feels like losing a part of myself. Our bond wasn't just forged by cameras and projects; it was also strengthened through a shared feeling of fear and resilience.

The laughter also kept us sane when everything around us was falling apart.

A prophetic farewell

Like most of us in Gaza, Yahya was forced to leave his home in Gaza City and endure the bitter torment of displacement. He carried his camera from one shelter to another, searching for fragments of stability in a life reduced to ruins.

He often told me that the hardest part was not hunger or exhaustion, but the feeling of being uprooted, of watching your walls, your street, your neighbourhood vanish and realising you might never return. That sense of loss lived with him until his last breath.

On 20 September, Yahya posted on Facebook words that now sound like prophecy: "How difficult it is when all options are death." He added the hashtag that has become the cry of his generation: #Save_Gaza.

It wasn't just another status update. It was a farewell in disguise, a heavy truth from someone who decided to face death armed only with his camera, determined to create joy where none was left.

He knew that survival had become an accident of chance in Gaza. Yet, instead of collapsing under the weight of despair, he turned his lens towards life. That was Yahya: never giving in to darkness, always insisting on light, even when it flickered faintly.

Yahya's life was made of joy. Before the war, he ran a small photography studio for newborns. He was the only photographer on the Gaza Strip dedicated to those fragile first days of life.

I remember watching him work, waiting patiently for the twitch of a baby's lips, the tiny hand clutching a mother's finger. He used to tell me, "every picture is proof that life insists on being born, even here."

He filled Gaza's collective memory with images of first breaths. Now, tragically, many of those babies he photographed are martyrs. Their faces live only in Yahya's images. And now he too has joined them, his own story ending in the rubble he once documented.

In his last Instagram post, he wrote: "Today we are forced to leave the studio and flee once again from Gaza City. I thus announce the end of the story of Yahya Barzaq Studio."

He knew the studio's story was finished. He didn't know his own would end just days later, killed by an Israeli airstrike in Deir al-Balah while documenting civilian suffering.

In his final photo, Yahya framed a piece of wood as a makeshift "window of hope." A few days later, he filmed himself closing it before displacement forced him to flee. It was as though he was leaving us a trail of symbols to decode: that life here could be reduced to a wooden frame, a baby's smile, or a Facebook post that admitted death had become the only option.

Proof that Gaza lived

The last time I saw Yahya was in Deir al-Balah, during my own displacement. He was bent low, with a camera in hand, photographing children playing in the rubble. Their faces were dirty, their eyes restless, but he coaxed smiles out of them like only he could. He bent to their level, shared a grin, waited patiently until they smiled back as if he wanted to convince them, and himself, that life was still possible.

That day, we spoke about "tomorrow." He told me, "We will not allow the war to kill our dreams. Everything the planes destroy, we will rebuild with our own hands, starting with ourselves, then our families, then our country." I believed him. Not because I wanted to, but because his eyes shone with a light too strong to doubt. But now those words have become my heaviest burden. His absence makes the promise impossible to carry.

When I think of Yahya, I don't only see him behind a camera. I see him beside me, late into the night, editing footage for the BBC, drinking tea gone cold as we argued over which frame captured the truth best. We worked on stories that demanded bravery, not because of the subjects, but because of the risks. Moving through streets that were bombed, interviewing survivors, dodging airstrikes.

That is why I call him my brother. Not by blood, but by the bond forged in fire, rubble, and even relentless deadlines. We held each other up in ways words cannot express.

Yahya didn't chase fame or headlines. He carried his camera as if it were his own heart. From the laughter of newborns to the cries of grieving mothers, his lens reflected Gaza's soul: its rare joys and its relentless sorrows.

Since October 2023, when this genocide began, his work had transformed into a duty. He documented children in white shrouds, entire families wiped out, farewells written in dust. Every photo he took felt like his way of leaving behind a testimony, "Remember us. Don't let them erase us."

Now, when I look at his photographs, I see them as acts of resistance. Every light he captured was defiance. Every child's face was evidence that Gaza still clings to life, no matter how many graves multiply.

False promises

Yahya's death is not an isolated tragedy. It is part of the systematic erasure of Gaza's witnesses. He was one of 253 journalists killed since the war began, but his story is not a number. His story represents a stolen joy, unfinished photographs, and a promise cut short.

At the time that he was killed, US President Donald Trump unveiled a so-called "peace plan" for Gaza. Here, people see it for what it is: another green light for Netanyahu to continue his massacres under international cover. As Taysir Abdel rightly stated, it's "a plan of quicksand", swallowing anyone who hopes it might save us.

And so, Yahya's hunger, his wooden window, his vow to rebuild, all clash with the empty words of distant men. He believed in rebuilding Gaza with hands, hearts, and cameras, not with false promises.

Yahya didn't want to be a hero. He wanted to be a happiness-maker. But by holding onto joy until his last breath, he became a hero, nonetheless.

A hero with a fragile frame, a camera that was really a heart, and a final prophetic Facebook post.

I write this as his friend, his colleague, his sister in every way except blood. I carry his promise now, even if it breaks me. I carry his laughter, even though it hurts.

But no matter how much I write, the truth remains unbearable: Yahya is gone, Gaza keeps burying its joy-makers, and the world still debates.

So, I end with the only question that matters: How much more blood must the world watch spill before it admits that Gaza is being annihilated?

Sally Ibrahim is The New Arab's correspondent from Gaza.

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Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.