It has been 15 months since the children of Gaza have been reduced to numbers. The number of reported deaths gives a certain number of children. Malnutrition and hunger are reported in the number of children affected and killed. Even the cold is measured by how many children have died in makeshift tents.
But behind these numbers are the sad stories of Palestinian children whose childhoods were cut short. As a nurse working at al-Shifa Medical Complex and at the makeshift clinic in the displacement camp, I have come across many sad stories of children suffering during this terrible war.
Seeing so many children suffer has made the ordeal of trying to survive genocide even more unbearable.
In early November 2023, when I was working in the emergency department, several injured people were rushed after another violent bombing. I went to take care of one of them: 10-year-old Tala.
When I looked at him, I saw that his arm had already been severed and his whole body was badly burned. He was crying a lot asking about his aunt. I didn’t know what to say. I gave him some pain medicine to calm him down a bit.
I tried to talk to him and bring him to tears. He told me that he lost his entire family because of the bombing of his house. He was not at home, so he was the only survivor. He was taken by his aunt who was living in her house, when an arrow hit a neighboring building. The explosion and debris hurt him.
As the effect of the painkiller wore off, Tala began to cry loudly again from the physical and mental pain of what had happened to her. It was sad to see this little girl suffering so much. He should be going to school, playing with his friends, hugging his family. And here he was alone, in unbearable pain and sorrow. How would he continue his life?
Every time I visited her in bed, I cried. He stayed in the hospital for two weeks and was finally discharged from his aunt.
Tala was one of the many children I saw in al-Shifa’s emergency department before we were deported by the Israelis at the end of November. Most of the victims of the bombings I saw were children. Many had accidents like Tala’s, some worse than hers. Most of them had seen their family members torn apart, bleeding to death or seriously injured. There are too many orphans.
When I moved to the southern camp, the suffering of the children I saw did not diminish. I volunteered at the camp’s medical center, where most of the patients were children.
One day in January 2024, a worried mother came to us with her seven-year-old son, named Youssef. He told us that he has been sick for a few weeks and doesn’t know what is causing him pain. When we examined him, we found that he had viral hepatitis and that he was in the advanced stage of the disease. She was in a lot of pain, vomiting and diarrhea, stomach cramps and fever.
We couldn’t do much for him. A few days later, Youssef died.
His death didn’t even count. He was not killed by an Israeli bomb, so he was not added to the number of people killed that day.
But he was still a victim of this war of genocide. If the health system in Gaza had not been destroyed, he would have been saved.
There are other injuries to children in Gaza that I, as a medical professional, cannot help with, even if I have all the medicine and all the equipment in the world. These are the psychological wounds suffered by every single child survivor of the massacre.
In July, I spoke to 11-year-old Ahmad at a place in Khan Younis where children go to fly kites. I had gone there to talk to the “healthy” kids – the ones I wouldn’t have seen in the makeshift clinic.
“There is nothing worse than this situation. The condition of children is like a shoe!” he told me.
I was surprised by his answer and laughed.
I asked him, “What hurt you the most in this fight?” He answered with heavy eyes due to grief, with one word: loss. He had lost his mother.
He narrates: “The group attacked us and bombed all the places where we lived. As for my mother, I did not see her because that day I was hit in the head near the skull by bombs and was taken to the intensive care hospital. Three days later, when I woke up and called my mother, they told me that Israel had killed her, just like that.”
I controlled myself; I didn’t want to cry in front of him. I’m sure I was weaker than him at this point.
No child deserves this painful life. No child should suffer from a preventable disease; no child should be burned or bombed. No child should see their parents die.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.
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