Sumaya Abu Ajwa woke up for Fajr prayer with her two adopted daughters, Nuseiba, 16, and Retaj, 14, and their mother.
She and the girls’ mother were standing to the side when the missiles struck, one of them passing between the two girls, Abu Ajwa told Tel Aviv Tribune.
“Suddenly, dust and fire spread everywhere, as if it were the day of judgment. I started frantically searching for the girls,” she says in tears, sitting on a bed because she has difficulty walking.
“I found the youngest girl (Retaj) and held her in my arms. Her blood was dripping onto my clothes, but I could feel that she was still breathing,” Abu Ajwa said, adding that she screamed for help, for someone to come and save Retaj, but the scene was so chaotic that no one could help her.
Shortly after, Retaj succumbed to his injuries.
The search for Nuseiba, Retaj’s older sister, took longer.
“I went back to the burning prayer hall several times, looking for her, but I couldn’t see her anywhere. Then someone told me she was under the rubble, so I went to see where they told me.
“When I reached her,” Abu Ajwa said, “I found her and her body had been torn in two.”
In bitter tears, she said she and the girls’ mother had done everything they could, through several moves, to keep all four of them together.
Abu Ajwa had discussed with the girls the possibility of leaving al-Tabin, but Nuseiba was reluctant to go, she said, because she was taking Quran classes there and was proud of her progress in memorizing the holy book.
“She told us that if we wanted to leave, it was no problem, that she would stay at the school. I told her that I had stayed with them throughout the war and that I would not abandon them now, that we would either get through it together or we would die together, but now they had gone and left us. They died before us.”
The girls had only one wish, she added: for the war to end, because they “have been scared so many times, displaced so many times, exhausted so many times and hungry so many times.”
The girls have a 14-year-old brother, Abu Ajwa said, who was taken from them when the Israeli army attacked al-Shifa hospital where they were sheltering at the time.
“The Israelis sent him north alone. We were very sad at the time but, who knows, maybe it saved him, he is the only hope we have left.
“Who will call me Mama Sumaya from now on? I want those words so much,” Abu Ajwa sobs.
