Dunya is holding a photograph. Seven smiling faces look again at her, a snapshot of the lives of pals who labored and socialised with one another.
She is in the course of the image, beaming. Now, her smile has gone. This picture was taken simply over a 12 months in the past, at a celebration in direction of the top of September 2023. Simply days earlier than the world modified.
The seven girls all labored on the nursing employees at al Shifa Hospital in Gaza Metropolis, the largest medical advanced in Gaza but in addition a website suspected by Israel of housing a Hamas command centre. When the struggle began, al Shifa was attacked.
Two of the ladies within the picture are lifeless.
Picture:
Al Shifa Hospital was as soon as the biggest and most superior medical facility in Gaza. Pic: Reuters
Rawan Abu Zbeidah, who’s second from the left, carrying a black headdress, was killed on 11 November, together with members of her household. She was pregnant. Anwaar Yassin, who’s third from the precise, was killed in the beginning of December, alongside along with her husband and youngsters, in Nuseirat, central Gaza.
All the opposite girls within the {photograph} have been displaced and dispersed.
“That last time we gathered together was a sweet day,” Dunya says. “It was beautiful. A week before 7 October. We never imagined it would be our last. All that’s left now are the pictures we have together, our memories. Our lives just disappeared.”
Dunya fled Gaza Metropolis and now works additional south at a hospital in Deir al Balah.
“Currently we’re scattered in different places,” she says of her pals who’re nonetheless alive. “Certainly one of us is within the north, there is not any method for me to succeed in her. She will be able to’t come right here, I am unable to go there.
“A few of them are displaced in the south. We try our best to keep in touch. We try to see each other if it’s possible. We get on video calls, we try to stay as close as possible.”
‘We won’t carry ourselves to just accept this actuality of shedding her’
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Houssam’s daughter, Dareen (pictured beneath) was killed in an airstrike
Gaza is a spot of ruined buildings and shattered lives.
In Gaza Metropolis, Houssam is sheltering within the ruined construction of Abdallah Al Dayhan College, the place his younger daughter, Dareen, used to review. The college has been battered, however it’s nonetheless nearly standing, nearly secure.
Dareen fled to the south within the early levels of the struggle, assured town of Khan Younis could be safer. As an alternative, she was killed, together with 4 of her family, in an Israeli air strike.
Houssam, who stayed in Gaza Metropolis together with Dareen’s brothers, is haunted, his eyes hole.
“Dareen was like any other teenager,” he says. “She was safe and she had ambitions. She dreamed of graduating to become a doctor. We can’t bring ourselves to accept this reality of losing her. We wanted to be there for her.”
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Roula continues to show in Gaza, regardless of shedding her dwelling
Not far-off, Dareen’s former trainer, Roula, additionally shelters. She used to reside throughout the street, however her dwelling was blown up.
“It’s a challenge for students who want to learn,” she says. “I lost a lot. I lost my home, my family. Some of my students who are very dear to me.”
She nonetheless teaches native youngsters and tries to protect a way of normality.
However how one can be regular when the world outdoors is rubble?
“There is no safe space for students,” she says. “Schools have been targeted but we have no choice but to carry on teaching, despite being in a constant sense of fear. This is no environment for learning – we have no chairs, no tables, no whiteboard. No classroom.”
A 12 months on from the Hamas assaults on 7 October and the outbreak of struggle, Gaza is a shellshocked place stuffed with shellshocked individuals – a land of ruined buildings and wrecked lives.
