Gaza City — The morning the unthinkable happened, my father held the radio close to him, hoping the news bulletin would bring some sort of relief, like news of a ceasefire. My mother was trying to sound reassuring after another long, sleepless night in our family home in central Gaza City.
“I hope that today will be peaceful, or at least that the night will be different from last night,” she told us.
That morning – December 7 – after contacting my press office in Doha to let them know that we had survived heavy nighttime bombing, I joined my father, Rafik, 65, who was listening to the news.
None of us had any idea what was going to happen.
It happened in a matter of milliseconds. In an instant, the bright morning sun disappeared, as the whole world went dark and my two-year-old son, Rafik, my wife, Asmaa, my father, my mother, Nadia and my sister, Fatma, all been immersed in a dark world. of suffocating dust, smoke and fire.
Everything seemed to disappear. All I knew was that pain coursed through my body and I was trapped under what I later learned was the weight of the ceiling bearing down on my family and me.
Panicked, I shouted my family’s names one by one. Unable to see any of them, I prayed and cried for one of them to answer me.
None of them did.
Moments later, I passed out.
Total confusion
A few hours later, it was the voices that came first.
Muffled cries of “He’s alive too!” » it became “He breathes!”. It didn’t matter to me. All I cared about was whether my family was safe.
“They’re all fine, don’t worry about them,” a stranger assured me, trying to stop the blood flowing from my broken arms and fingers.
“Please don’t make any effort to move – keep your head up,” he ordered as he searched my body for other injuries.
All I felt was absolute confusion. I couldn’t understand what was happening. I didn’t understand who all these people were, or how we had been hit by an airstrike that no one had heard of. I couldn’t tell where my family was, or think clearly about what had happened.
I remember the explanations. It had been two hours since the house was bombed. All this time, we remained buried under the rubble, lying there while our neighbors frantically struggled to break through the cement walls of the house to reach us.
As I slowly began to understand what had happened, the pain I felt seemed to intensify.
We were all injured in the airstrike. I remember my son, Rafik, screaming, his face covered in blood and dust as strangers tried to clean him.
How we survived the bombing, the glass and metal that fell on us as the two-story building collapsed on our heads, I cannot say. It still feels like a miracle.
But even though this airstrike didn’t kill us, it destroyed something within us. It erased any last vestiges we had of normalcy and continued life. In one tiny moment, it sowed the seeds of the mental wounds that we will carry with us every day for the rest of our lives.
A week of endless agony
Our neighbors were able to give us immediate first aid, cleaning and dressing our wounds. But nothing could ease the pain that was now ravaging our bodies. No one had the illusion that access to medical care would be easy.
Hospitals and medical facilities were seriously affected by the bombings. The lack of adequate medical supplies led to many injured people losing their lives to infection. Traveling anywhere in northern Gaza carries a serious risk of being targeted by an Israeli sniper or being caught in a barrage of gunfire. However, despite Israeli forces’ orders to leave, this area remains home to hundreds of thousands of civilians, all of whom must endure these risks on a daily basis.
For six days, in the ruins of our house, we dreamed of finding painkillers – or something that would at least allow us to sleep.
There were none.
We were told that we were lucky to survive the bombings. While this may be true, it provides little comfort during the night, when the pain from your injuries becomes indescribable, depriving you of sleep or any comfort.
Infection is a constant concern. Whenever the first trace of contamination appears, the wounds should be cleaned with scalding water, a liquid so hot that it burns the healthy skin around the wound. It was difficult to make Rafik understand that we weren’t trying to burn him. Yet even though the pain of the scalding water was greater than that of any infection, he accepted it.
The alternative is not worth considering.
Flee in terror
A week passed and we began to notice improvements in our health. Meanwhile, the bombing continued.
On December 14 around noon, our neighborhood was subjected to an overwhelming air and artillery barrage. It was incredible and seemed totally mindless. Our neighbors were dying by the minute. Many others were injured.
When Israeli troops arrived following the bombing, those who could fled for their lives – including my family. I can only describe this moment as pure terror. Those who were hit or injured by the barrage were left behind.
To stop and help was to die.
As we zigzagged through the streets amid crowds of terrified people, the pain from our wounds returned with a vengeance.
My wife, with our terrified son in her arms, suggested we seek shelter in one of the schools run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), relatively far from the focus of the bombings.
There, we joined thousands of others, all of whom said they had left behind scenes of death and carnage.
Today, we only have the essentials left to live. Food and medicine are not available.
There are not enough mattresses and blankets to protect against the bitter cold of the night. Drinking water is a luxury, leaving people with nothing to drink but dirty water, increasing the risks of bacterial infection and stomach diseases.
Children, pregnant women, young people and the elderly all face the same daily battle: survival.
Life in this school is waiting for death.
We can’t lose anything anymore. We have lost friends, loved ones, colleagues, teachers and doctors. Everything – absolutely everything we had – is gone.
Even if the war ends now, it will take us years to begin to recover some of what we lost.
When we might ever have a place to call home again, we have no idea.
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