When the gates of the Israeli prison finally opened for Haitham Salem, he thought he was walking back into life. But just days after his release under the recent prisoner exchange agreement, the 42-year-old Gaza resident discovered that the world he longed to return to no longer existed, his wife and children had been killed in an Israeli airstrike that struck their tent.

“I came back from the graves of the occupation, only to find my loved ones already buried,” he said, his voice heavy with disbelief. “When I arrived at Nasser Medical Complex, I tried calling them again and again, but there was no answer. Then someone told me, ‘Your wife and kids have gone up... Thank God and praise Him.’ That moment broke me completely. Life has no meaning after them.”

Haitham spoke of his release with a hollow tone, describing how he had dreamed of simple things, a meal shared, clean clothes, the embrace of his children. But those small hopes have vanished. “I wish I had stayed in prison and never heard that news,” he murmured.

His story is one among hundreds, prisoners freed after years of confinement, returning to a Gaza scarred by genocide, only to find the people and homes they dreamed of long gone. They walk through ruins carrying freedom in name only, haunted by what awaits them outside the prison walls: an emptiness deeper than captivity itself.