All that little Omar wanted on his birthday was for his father to return home carrying chicken for a simple festive meal, but almost a year has passed since his father disappeared from his life after he was kidnapped by Israeli forces, and the wish of the Gazan child has not yet been fulfilled.
Thus, the American website “Mondoweiss” began to narrate the suffering of Heba (26 years old) and her three children, Youssef (8 years old), Omar (5 years old), and Yasmine (2 years old), after her husband Mahmoud (30 years old) was kidnapped in March 2024.
The report said that in the midst of the massive catastrophe in Gaza, individuals’ stories are often lost in the folds of breaking news and devastating statistics, but the reality is that every day, families do their best to withstand the heartbreak of losing loved ones and hold on to the remaining traces of normal life, which has been taken away by “the thirst for… “Israeli bloodshed.”
A wish
Mahmoud was trying to buy chicken to feed his family amid the hell of bombing and food scarcity, while Heba was preparing a simple meal of canned peas for her children when she received the news that changed her life.
After Mahmoud disappeared, weeks before Omar’s fifth birthday, the smell of cooked chicken crept into the family tent from a neighboring tent, and sparked the child’s imagination, especially since all he had tasted in the past weeks was canned food that was about to expire, and since then Omar’s wish has been mixed. He ate chicken until his father returned safely, according to the report.
The author of the report, Raja Muhammad, said that Heba revealed what was feeling in her heart after the journalist’s repeated visits to the family tent in Al-Mawasi in the south of the Gaza Strip, where Gazans were stranded and faced with horrors and famine, and there was no hope for the worried mother except what she saw from her innocent child who did not understand “the meaning of war.” And the injustice that afflicts his country.”
nightmare
Heba tried to hide her tears from her children as she talked about the difficulties of life without her husband, and her voice was interrupted from time to time by the buzz of Israeli marches, the sound of bombing, and the screams of children, and she asked angrily: “Why? Why did they take him? When will this nightmare end?”
The mother struggles to provide the basics of life for her family despite the Israeli forces preventing aid from arriving, and she tries to appear strong and cheerful for the sake of her children, clinging to the hope that the war will end and Mahmoud will return alive from the clutches of “those who do not care about human life,” according to the report.
Heba said that her son’s dreams of his father returning and eating chicken are small, but almost impossible, and her thoughts often return to the days before the war, when life was simple and her husband was with her. Specifically, she recalled a day in March 2023, when the entire extended family gathered at the dinner table near By the sea to celebrate Omar’s fourth birthday, they shared food and jokes.
Bitter reality
Now, a year has passed since Omar’s wish, and he will be six years old in 3 months. He still talks about his father a lot, and he and his brothers believe that Mahmoud will return home soon with some chickens.
As the nights passed, Heba tried to be patient with her and her children’s bleak reality, and her heart was heavy with a thousand suppressed fears, but she assured Rajaa that she would continue the struggle, no matter the difficulties.
She told the writer: “I will survive, not because it is easy, but because that is the only option. I have children and I have to protect them, and even if I do not know what tomorrow will bring, I know that I will face it with all my strength.”