After being evacuated to Qatar from Gaza, 9-year-old Palestinian Mahmoud Yousef Ajjour still dreams of becoming a pilot one day, despite having both arms amputated after being injured in an Israeli missile attack.
In a small apartment in the Qatari capital, Doha, Mahmoud Ajjour’s mother slowly helps her son put on his school uniform as he prepares to go to school. It will take some time to fit him with two prosthetic limbs.
The child said the missile hit him as he was leaving his home in Gaza last December with his parents.
“I was sleeping on the floor, I don’t know if anything happened to me, I don’t know that my hands were cut off,” he added.
severe pain
His mother said he underwent surgery in Gaza under a light anesthetic, and woke up from the operation to find himself in severe pain and with both arms amputated.
The child was able to leave the stricken sector, where the Israeli aggression destroyed many hospitals, and doctors say that they are often forced to perform surgeries without any anesthesia or painkillers.
Qatar received many wounded people from the Gaza Strip to receive treatment.
Mahmoud Ajjour longs to return to the Gaza Strip, which was vibrant before the Israeli aggression, despite widespread poverty and high unemployment rates in one of the most densely populated places in the world. His home was destroyed in the Israeli aggression.
More than 41 thousand martyrs
The Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip says that the Israeli aggression has so far resulted in the martyrdom of at least 41,118 Palestinians, the injury of 95,125 others, the displacement of about two million people, and the destruction of most of the Strip.
Mahmoud Ajur said, “I hope that Gaza will return to how it was before, and be better and more beautiful than it was.”
In the long-established Palestinian school in Doha, Ajjour sits patiently waiting as his classmates write down lessons, only raising his voice with them when answering the teacher’s questions.
School psychologist Hanin Al-Salamat sees Ajur as an inspiration, saying, “Sometimes you feel that as a person you draw strength from him.”
Ajur refuses to surrender to physical restrictions, and says confidently, “I will try everything, and I will become a pilot. I always play ball with the boys. Yesterday I was playing with my friends. I hope to have two hands so that I can go back to how I was before, and I hope to hold the ball with my hands.”