One November morning, Noreen Rashid’s uncle woke her up at 6 a.m. crying.

“I kept asking him who was dead because I knew someone was dead,” said Rashid, a Morris County resident who has family in Gaza.

“And he told me ‘Ahmad and his daughters.’ And I was in so much disbelief. I was like, my grandmother was with them … is my grandma dead?’ And he kept shaking his head.”

Rashid had just spent time over the summer with Ahmad and her two cousins, 12-year-old Nouran and 10-year-old Razan, when she was able to visit Gaza.

Thousands of Palestinian Americans in New Jersey await similar news to Rashid’s. With one of the largest Palestinian diasporas in the country, many families across the state check their phones every day, hoping to hear from their loved ones back in Gaza — that is if those loved ones have phone signal or are able to charge their phones, or if they hadn’t died overnight.

The pause in the fighting from a temporary ceasefire over the past week has brought a mix of emotions for Palestinian Americans, said Palestinian American Community Center Executive Director Rania Mustafa.

Skyrocketing stress

“It’s like being enveloped in a constant stress ball … I’m somewhat relieved that this feeling of constant bombardment of missiles and bombs is not happening,” said Mustafa. “But they’re still living under an occupation. And they’re still subject to the realities of that, including being detained for no reason, and people still being shot.”

And Palestinian Americans never know what news they will receive on their phone. For Sami Shaban of Franklin Township, phone calls brought news of more death in his family. He lost 17 family members total in the first month of Israel’s attacks — in one blast, four generations were wiped out. In another, three generations were killed.

“Every time that I see the phone ring from somebody with news from over there, my heart drops. I feel a sense of what’s about to come. And it terrifies me,” said Shaban, speaking to NJ Spotlight News before the temporary ceasefire.

Worse than a ‘horror film’

“My cousin tells me it’s worse than any horror film that anybody could imagine, that there’s nothing that makes them feel safe right now, everywhere they go, there’s a chance that it will explode,” he added.

During one phone call, Shaban’s father told him that nine family members had died in a blast. The irony is that a cousin invited their family to their house saying they’d be “safe,” but then they were later killed. One uncle initially lived but was burned head to toe. There wasn’t any hospital bed for him, so he was brought to a hospital hallway and laid on cardboard boxes. No pain relief medicines were available.

“It makes me numb. Do I believe it? It’s a bad dream. But it’s not a bad dream. It’s a fact,” said Shaban’s father Atef Shaban during a Nov. 1 CAIR New Jersey press conference.

Another phone call days later brought Shaban’s family the news that this uncle finally succumbed to his injuries. Before he died, he said, “I see the heavens.”

“Many of my family members have said they’re just waiting for their turn … as depressing and as horrible as that sounds, they don’t really see any, any other exit right now from what’s happening,” said Shaban.

For Rashid, phone calls and voice notes became the way her family could piece together and deliver news — or help — in real time.

Just one day before she learned of the deaths of her uncle and cousins, other family members were killed or injured. She gathered with her loved ones at her aunt’s house nearby. Her aunt, who is a doctor, was on the phone with her mother telling her how to check her brother-in-law’s pulse and how to care for his neck injury.

“It was just a very surreal experience, like being there while she’s on the phone,” Rashid said.

When children die

Her uncle woke her up the next morning with the news that Ahmad, Nouran and Razan Allouh were killed. Ahmad sent his two daughters, Nouran and Razan, to get water from their barrel to take a bath. But they were gone for too long. And when they went to check, they saw the two girls on the ground, their bodies maimed.

Another aunt in Gaza called Rashid’s grandmother and made a voice recording of their conversation. In the background, Rashid said she could hear Ahmad crying.

“I sent them out to get water. I don’t know what they did wrong. I don’t know what they did wrong. They killed them. I don’t know what they did wrong,” said Ahmad, according to Rashid.

Ahmad went out to cover his daughters’ bodies and say his goodbyes, despite the protests from his mother to stay inside. Another family member called him while he was with his daughters’ bodies when they heard a “shock” on the phone.

“The phone just completely went quiet. And all she could hear were airplanes, like Israeli drones or airplanes in the background. And she was in disbelief and she was too scared to say anything. So she ended the phone (call) and she called him again and he didn’t pick up,” said Rashid.

Ahmad, too, was killed.

Telling their stories

“If there had been a ceasefire, or if the lawmakers of this state and country had seen Palestinians as human beings, then Nouran, Razan and Ahmad wouldn’t be dead,” said Rashid.

Rashid said under “normal circumstances,” she wouldn’t give an interview about her family’s deaths so soon after it happened. They weren’t able to be buried before her grandmother left her home, and so their bodies lay there alone until sometime during the temporary ceasefire.

“(Participating in the interview) really speaks to say how Palestinian people, like me as a Palestinian, I feel as though I’m not able to properly grieve their deaths … so I feel as though the dignity of Palestinians has been stripped from us through life and even after death,” Rashid said.

Living so far away from his family in Gaza, Shaban said he feels a “complex set of emotions.”

“I feel helpless, in one sense to all the horror that’s happening to my family. I feel loved by my immediate community, because of all the outreach to me and my family, you know, and even not just from Muslims or Arabs, like from my whole community,” said Shaban.

“I feel like it’s my duty, though. I feel like if I don’t speak about it, if I can’t tell their story, then it doesn’t get told,” he added.