As a boy, he lost a leg and his mother in an attack on Gaza. Can he now keep his own children safe?

Since they fled northern Gaza last month, Abdullah Alathamna and more than two dozen of his relatives have lived in a cramped classroom at a school near the border with Egypt.

At night, he lies down on a thin mattress alongside his wife and two young daughters. He closes his eyes, but rarely sleeps. Explosions sound in the distance, violently shaking the walls.

Each blast transports him to the moment during his childhood when artillery shells fell out of the night sky and his world collapsed around him.

I first met Abdullah shortly after that attack, when he was a boy learning to cope with different shades of loss. I've been in touch with him since, over 13 years and multiple wars in the Gaza Strip that have made it impossible for his wounds from that night to ever fully heal.

He tells me he is desperate to shield his daughters from the horrors of this war. From traumas like the one he barely survived.

"I want to protect them," said Abdullah, now 24. "But I cannot."

A lifetime in Gaza has taught him many things. That peace is fleeting. That war is inevitable. And that even the best parent cannot stop a falling bomb.

In 2006, Abdullah was 7 and living with his family in Beit Hanoun, a small city on the northeastern edge of Gaza.