Testimonies from Gaza: Survivors recall the loss of their families
Wa’ad AbuZaher from Gaza posted a Facebook request for testimonies: What happened the night you lost your family? Where were you?
Nadav Franckovich [נדב פרנקוביץ’] translated some of these to Hebrew and wrote: With over a thousand comments, here are a select few. Keren Rubinstein, translated his work to English.
Aya Walid Sham’a:
“That night on 15 January 2024, my four sisters and I were lying on the floor amongst our small children who slept around us in the centre of the structure we had escaped to. We fled there because we thought it was the relatively safer area around because it was farthest away from the tank bombardments. To my side were my three boys — Elyaman, Nasser, and baby Rayyan who was only 51 days old, and to whom I gave birth during the temporary ceasefire. My sisters were lying in front of me. My sister Rama, bless her soul, insisted that we should remain awake, in contrast to other nights. and even prepared coffee for us. We sat and talked, encouraging each other, even laughing, which we hadn’t done since the start of the war.
A split second separated life after form the life before. One second that flashed through time and left me in shock. All I recall is that one moment I was still looking into my sister Rama’s eyes, bless her soul, then I closed my eyes because of that red light that seared the room, and then the sounds arrived and I opened my eyes and found myself in a grave that engulfed me in every direction, sand and stones filling my face and mouth.
That moment I knew I was about to die. I started praying for myself and my family and asked Allah to take us to heaven. I didn’t scream and I wasn’t very scared, I felt a strange calm that Allah mercifully blessed me with — until I suddenly heard my little six year old son Nasser’s voice, the only one of my sons who survived.
The moment I heard him crying and screaming and I felt him trying to hold onto my fingertips, which were all he could see of me — I fell down onto the ground floor and the ceiling fell on top of me, and Nasser above me was trapped stuck on the ceiling, squashed under bits of furniture. I started talking to him, trying to calm him down and saying I’m okay — and half an hour later my brother and neighbours heard his voice and rescued him, and then he showed them exactly where I was.
I got out of the ruins by some miracle of Allah after I had already started to suffocate and as the sand almost reached the top of the pit I was trapped in. In the last moment I felt a hand digging in the sand, then the hand landed on my mouth and nose and I heard them saying, “keep her airways clear.” That’s how I was rescued, but outside other traumas were awaiting me.
The first thing I discovered is that I lost both my beloved sisters Ruba and Rama, then I was hit by the terrible news that both my eldest son, seven year old Elyaman, the laughter and soul of our home, and my baby Rayyan, had died. Later I realised Riyan had fallen through the wall of the room into the neighbour’s house.
Beautiful Rayyan slept in my arms a whole night as his body is cold and lifeless. I wrapped him with whatever I was wearing because his small body was so cold. We sat like that for 12 hours that seemed like many long nights and months, waiting for an ambulance to take them to the hospital. My little sister Rama stayed under the ruins for 12 hours because it was difficult to rescue her from under the column that collapsed on her head. She was only taken out the following morning and the paramedics found a piece of cashew in her mouth which she didn’t have time to swallow, her life cut abruptly short; they removed it from her mouth, stained in blood.
Half a year has passed since that bloody night and I still see everything that happened in vivid detail as though it’s just happening now, like a dream we hope to wake up from one day. May Allah embrace our hearts and give us the resilience to last till the day we join them in paradise.”
Suzan Al-Amasi:
“I fled to an area called A-Shaffa after I could no longer stay at home and not in any other relative’s house. My main contact with the rest of my family was when my auntie’s son would visit and bring me fresh water from Tel Al-Hawa, because in A-Shaffa they cut off our water altogether — and I couldn’t go to Tel Al-Hawa because I was already buried under ruins three times there before being rescued, and mentally I just couldn’t go near that place again. By then we hadn’t had any water for a long time, but water wasn’t as great a concern for me as the fear that something would happen to them.
My father would come regularly every few days to update me and ease my concerns, letting me know they’re okay. He was never late. But that time he was late, very late. Eventually he came only a week later and asked me whether my brother Fuad was with me, and I told him that he wasn’t. He tried his best not to make me worry, and led me to believe that they had just being going from place to place by foot and lost touch with one another. In the end I found out that my brother went out to get water for my family and disappeared for two days — so they thought he may have been with me.
Later it turned out that what happened was that snipers murdered him, they shot him in the chest. He remained lying on the ground next to one of the towers and nobody saw him because it was in the extreme cold of December. That’s how my brother, my beloved, Fuad, was killed.
My father gave me the news on his following visit, a week later — ‘your brother has beat us to heaven’, he told me — and I didn’t even have the chance to see him, to part with him, or to stand by his grave. “
Azz Lulu:
“I was besieged inside Al Shifa Hospital where I was volunteering to assist as a medical student in intensive care. During the siege we were completely cut off from media and internet and everything else, most of the time we had no idea what was happening outside. On Monday at 9 pm I was given a message from Dr Fadel Naim from the Baptist Hospital: ‘May you have many offspring, I’m sorry to tell you, your house has been bombed — your father, brother, his wife, their daughter, your grandmother, your uncles, their wives and children, are all buried under the ruins — your mother is the only survivor but she is wounded, they managed to rescue her from the ruins and she is here in hospital.”
Muhammad Awad:
“We were displaced and I was hoping to get hold of a tent for my family, to buy something with some of the somewhat valuable items and also the rest — for us, for my brother and his kids. I ended a phone conversation with my brother with the promise that the next day I’m organising a tent for him, but he beat me to it and they were already sorted, wrapped up in shrouds — himself, his children, his wife and her entire family. I received the news from the only survivor, his young son Mahmoud, who told me that the Occupation had bombed them and they were all killed and perished before his very eyes. I was silent, I couldn’t say anything”.
Asma’a Naim:
“Myself, my sisters and their children — we were sleeping together in a small room, side by side. Samah and her girls Lara and Shayma’ and her son Taysir, and beside them Batul, across from my other sisters, and against the wall was myself and my daughters, Lia and Rima, who were in my arms.
Over six months have passed since then. I see the images from the moment of the bombing every night, I see them before my very eyes every time I close them. I see the total darkness, the ruins, and the mounds of rocks. I see the fire spreading even though my eyes are full of dirt and dust. I see my daughters Ria and Rima as though they’re till here, laying in front of me, as I am helpless, unable to move to reach them.
That moment when I understood we were bombed, I heard my heart beating and nearly exploding in my chest. I started screaming without awareness — ‘There is no god but Allah, there is no god but Allah’ — I screamed with a mouth full of dust, till I had no strength left, I didn’t know what I was doing and then I just went back to screaming, I thought that maybe those would be my last words and in a minute another plane will come and finish me off too.
In those moments, in the worst test a human may undergo, do you know the first thing that comes to mind? I thought to myself, ‘these flames, these ruins, there’s no way this is heaven, which means I’m staying in this world. Why?! Why me? Why am I alive and not dead? Why did I see them die and I wasn’t killed along with them? I’m completely alone now? Where are they? Where is everybody? How will I tell my mother about this?!’
Then you understand and you try and pray that maybe someone will still survive, that the damage will only be to property and not to life, not the children. You pray for salvation and mercy.
Then you’re told. Certainty comes, one after the other. Each name shatters your heart. Lara, Shayma’ cannot be found, and also Batul, and where’s Taysir? Then comes the bitter news that Lia my daughter did not survive.
We still haven’t found Shayma’ to this moment, and we only identified Taysir by the blue pants.
198 nights have passed, and each night I see the moment of the explosion when I close my eyes and try to sleep. I wish we could sleep!
What’s certain is that the only survivors here are those who were killed.”
Ahmed Ali’s Wife:
“We were the four of us — myself, my partner, my daughter and son — trapped in the first siege on A-Shaffa. We were alone in a house on the edges of A-Shaffa, we wanted to stay together the whole time and never separate so that if we stay alive, we can all stay alive together and if we die we will all die together, but fortune chose a different end for us — we were shot by a sniper. We were in the building’s stairwell when we tried to leave to get water after 12 days of siege, we thought to risk it because it was suddenly quiet, and we felt like the tanks had retreated. I was injured in my hand and my daughter in her shoulder, but my spouse and son were meticulously hit by the sniper with bullets to the heart and head. My spouse was killed on the spot but my son was dying before my eyes for two hours. I screamed, ‘help, Allah, help’, but there was no salvation”.
Iman Odeh:
“On 6 December at 6 in the evening I was sitting at home with my sisters. Father was in the hospital and mother was with him. Of course we were under fire the whole time, the situation was dreadful, and my heart was going crazy with worry for them and for us because I knew no place was safe, not even the hospital. Then suddenly my auntie’s son called his father and told him that Abu Ahmed, who’s my father, had died. He had been sick for four years, his condition would always deteriorate then improve, each time we would thank god he was still with us — in the end his fate was to die in wartime.
When we heard, we all started crying terribly, and in that moment I wanted to go straight to the hospital to farewell him but it was too dangerous, and we decided we’d go early in the morning, only we couldn’t go in the morning either, because there was heavy bombardment and it was again too dangerous. I told my mother, ‘wait, don’t bury him without me’, but she told me, ‘we’ve already buried him, we did the washing ceremony properly and his face was so beautiful’. I didn’t have a chance to visit him later because they even destroyed his grave, it was raked up by the bulldozers.”
Nur Radwan:
“I was told the house where my displaced relatives had moved to had been bombed, something inside me knew that they were all killed but I tried to hold onto hope that maybe one of them survived and I’d still have someone left in this world. I wanted so much to go to sleep and to wake up and for someone to come and tell me what happened to them, let me know they’re okay, to know they haven’t left me, but ever since that day I wake each morning completely devastated. They were all killed, all 25 people, in one instant“.
Manar Manoura:
“We were trapped under the ruins when my spouse took his last breaths beside me and died, and the whole time I kept calling him and holding his hand in the hope he would hear me. It wasn’t at night time but it was a nightmare that will haunt me until the moment I meet him again.”
Miriam Mazen:
“On the seventh day of the war I wanted to talk to my entire family in the north of the Gaza Strip to check they’re all okay, because I don’t live with them but with my spouse in the centre of the Strip. They had all gathered together so we can do a video chat. We did the video chat in the morning, we tried to encourage one another — and suddenly they were hit by a missile, the lights were out, it became dark. None of them survived.”
Isra’a Ramalawi:
“We were displaced in Han Younes and a bomb fell on us. We were rescued from the dirt and ruins and Allah saved us by miracle. The next morning we left towards Rafah and on the way father called us and the whole family to check we were all okay, but he couldn’t get hold of everyone. Then he disappeared, for a whole month we didn’t hear from my father or my sister’s spouse. We searched, checked, asked everyone we could, anyone who’d seen them and even those who hadn’t — there were days we lost hope and days we somehow found hope. In the end we found out that my father and Ali were killed in an attack by four misiless launched by F-16 fighter jets that eradicated not just their house but the entire area.”
Abu Yusef:
“My heart will not stop hurting. I saw the missile fall on them. My spouse and my daughters, my sister and her partner and their children — all killed.”
Ala’a Muhammad:
“I was breastfeeding my youngest who was only five days old, while talking to him on the phone. The last thing he told me was ‘don’t be afraid, look after Sarah’. Turns out that a few hours later he went to his uncle’s house. Before I go to sleep I always check the news and suddenly I see they bombed his uncle’s house. At first I couldn’t believe my eyes but then I started yelling from fear, I tried calling him but he didn’t answer, he still won’t answer. That night I did not sleep, I felt like my soul left my body, I was so hot. The next morning I couldn’t stop crying and everyone was crying around me, my heart was aching so much. They couldn’t rescue him from the ruins. I prayed toAllah for days and nights that he will survive this but he had a different fate. Three days after we knew he had died, they managed to take him out and bury him. Since then, my eyes will start shedding tears in the middle of the day uncontrollably. I still feel like he’s alive and that we’re in contact, and when I mention his name it’s hard for me to say ‘may he rest in peace’. I keep praying for him just as much as I did when he was alive.”
