In Gaza, many branches of one family often share a home. Grandparents, aunts and uncles become like second parents to children. Cousins become like siblings. Family members care for each other’s kids, changing diapers, feeding them, making sure they get to and from school. In moments of crisis and uncertainty, they evacuate together, worry together, grieve together.
For the 33rd day, Israeli bombs and missiles have rained down on the besieged Gaza Strip, after the 7 October attack by Hamas killed 1,400 Israelis and took more than 240 people hostage or prisoner. The death toll in Gaza reached more than 10,000 people on Monday, according to the Palestinian ministry of health. Israel’s government says it will not consider a ceasefire unless the hostages are freed as the humanitarian crisis in Gaza worsens by the hour.
By the 31st day of Israeli airstrikes, a ministry of health spokesperson said that 1,200 Palestinian families had their homes destroyed, and that dozens of families were removed from Gaza’s population registry altogether. But in some families, a member or two does survive, who must learn to go on alone after painful and sudden loss. The Guardian spoke to some of these last survivors during the third week of the war.
‘I found myself covered in others’ blood’
Rushdiyya Toutah is a 43-year-old wheelchair user from Gaza City, in the north of Gaza. On 17 October, she sat in the yard at the al-Ahli Arab hospital, surrounded by other displaced people who sought refuge there. An hour later, a blast killed nearly 500 of them, according to Palestinian officials. (Israeli and US intelligence officials say the death count was much lower.) That included every adult member of Toutah’s family. Once she learned the fate of her loved ones, she could only cry out: “Why, why I am here? I need to go with them. We were always together, why didn’t we die together?”
Earlier in the day, Toutah said her eldest brother alerted the family to airstrikes near their home and insisted they all evacuate to a safer place. Toutah and one of her sisters are mobility-impaired, which meant it would have been nearly impossible for them to hurry out of their home in time to escape an impending strike. And in the event of a surprise attack, they would not have been able to pull themselves out of the rubble.
So the whole family, nearly 40 members in all, headed towards the hospital. “We felt safe,” Toutah said. “There were thousands of people and kids.” Her brothers set up tents for everyone in the yard, and they settled in as they listened to Israeli warplanes fly overhead.
Then, horror struck: “All I remember is that the kids said that they were hungry, so their mothers started making sandwiches for them after asking them to go to play in the yard,” Toutah said. “I saw them laughing and playing while their mothers were happy, preparing the food. Then I found myself covered in others’ blood in al-Shifa hospital, where the rescuer and the paramedics took me.”
Toutah’s parents, her two brothers, their wives and her disabled sister were all killed. Of the children in her family, only a nephew, Yamen, survived. Toutah somehow made it through, although with significant injuries: “I felt pain in all my body parts, and I could barely even see, as my eyes were hurting.” She says they were exposed to intense flames. Palestinian officials say an Israeli airstrike caused the explosion, while US intelligence agencies and Israel claim the strike was the result of a malfunctioning missile launched from within Gaza.
Toutah has another sister who is married and living elsewhere in Gaza City. Because al-Shifa hospital was overrun with the injured and quickly running out of supplies, her sister wanted Toutah to leave with her. Toutah hesitated.
“It was a difficult and risky choice. I asked: ‘What if they bomb us again?’ But my sister insisted: ‘We have no choice but to face our destiny,’” she said. “I am now trapped in the home of my sister, where the house is shaking every single moment there is a massive explosion. Now, my sister is taking care of me along with my little nephew, Yamen, who is also a sole survivor.”
‘I am crumbled now. No dreams, no plans’
Eighteen-year-old Dima al-Lamdani dreamed of being a successful businesswoman while growing up in the Shati refugee camp. When Israel’s military warned on 13 October that everyone in the north of Gaza should evacuate south, Lamdani’s father called his brother, and all of them, several generations of an extended family, decided to flee the camp. They took temporary refuge in the home of a family friend, carrying enough fuel with them to fill generators to charge their phones and LED lights.
Two days later at dawn, Lamdani sat with her aunt drinking coffee, unable to sleep. The next thing she remembers, she was covered in rubble with the sounds of people shouting all around her. Nearly 50 people were in the residential building, including 17 members of Lamdani’s family. Lamdani, her brother, and her two younger cousins, who were pulled from the rubble of the house, were the only survivors. “The time I spent waiting to be found were some of the most horrifying moments. I was about to lose my mind. I screamed and cried when they found me,” Lamdani said.
Lamdani was then brought to a mortuary where she had to identify the bodies of her loved ones. “I could hardly recognise them, as their facial features changed. I bawled and begged: ‘Please don’t leave me alone. I can’t live without you!’” she said. Just the week before, they had been making plans for her future. “I told them I will be a popular person and businesswoman and that they will all come to beg to work with me. I was joking to make them laugh.”
Lamdani’s two cousins are now in her care, and she wonders how she will go on. “I am crumbled now. No dreams, no hopes, no plans. I can’t imagine my life without my mother and sister and father,” she said. “The Israeli forces betrayed us. There is no place that is safe.”
‘How can she live without parents?’
Samah Aladini is grieving for her lost daughter, whose home in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza was hit without warning by an Israeli airstrike on 24 October. Nai’emah, her six-year-old granddaughter, survived the strike and is now in her grandmother’s care. “I remember my slain daughter. How can her little daughter live without parents?” Aladini said.
As Nai’emah sits in Aladini’s lap, she recalled how her mother was sleepy, but she knew Nai’emah loved fried potatoes so she cooked in spite of her fatigue. Her paternal grandmother was praying and her grandfather was listening to the news on the radio. The last thing Nai’emah remembered is that he called her and her siblings over to give them all something – a treat, maybe. The strike that followed killed Nai’emah’s parents, paternal grandparents and siblings.
“I still don’t know what my grandfather wanted to give us. I dreamed of him yesterday, that he gave me a doll, but the doll was scary and I ran away,” Nai’emah said.
Aladini wants her granddaughter to have access to therapy, as she isn’t eating. “We will have to wait until the war ends, if we survive, to treat her,” she said.
Wafa Aludaini is a Gaza-based journalist and activist