Aya, law graduate and women’s rights advocate

Aya is a 23-year-old recent law school graduate and campaigner for women’s rights who has applied to study international law at the University of Sienna in Italy.

Her family is one of four that kept video diaries during the first year of the Gaza war for use in a BBC documentary, “One year of war in Gaza: Life, Death, and Hope.”

During the course of the year, Aya travels an emotional roller coaster. Early on, she’s checking herself out in a mirror to see that she’s still pretty. She’s terrified when the family is forced to relocate amid bombing, and bored in the tent they move to.

She’s devastated when she learns that the family home in northern Gaza has been destroyed, elated to be accepted by the University of Sienna, grief-stricken when she learns an uncle has been killed, and crushed when the Rafah crossing is closed just before she was to use it to go to Italy. “I might die without achieving my dreams,” she says.

More at BBC