The last sound I remember was the laughter of my children playing nearby. Then a darkness descended—not just the absence of light, but a void swallowing everything. When I came back to myself, I thought I was blind. Nothing pierced the blackness: no voices, no faces, just silence. My world had shrunk to the size of fear.
I didn’t know where to begin, but the first instinct was to find my family. My wife lay nearby, fractured but alive, sheer will holding her there. I switched on my phone’s weak light and plunged into the debris. From beneath the rubble came the faintest voice: “Baba, Baba, where are you?” It was Julia, my three-year-old, pleading, scared, tethered to hope.
I lifted her from the ruins, the weight of her small body anchoring me to a fragile purpose. Then I went back for Kareem, my son riddled with wounds none of us should bear so young. His head trauma plunged him into a trance-like state; his whispered apologies, “I’m sorry Mama, please don’t blame me,” tore through my soul.
At the hospital, I refused help. I became their alone guardian—the surgeon and the father, the healer and the witness. I donned the cloak of heroism for them, hoping to shield their innocence, to offer a fragment of safety in a world unkind. But the burden is heavy.
Now, my wife is confined to a wheelchair—her strength diminished as the days stretch on. I have become the caregiver to all of them, the center in a shifting, fragile circle. My children’s wounds heal slowly, but their minds remain scarred. Simple acts—eating, speaking—become mountains for little bodies weighed down by trauma. Julia wakes screaming in the night, her small frame trembling at every distant rocket’s echo. The lies we told her, the hope we clung to, no longer hold. She sees through them, the thin veil torn by a waking terror.
I try to hold myself together for them, to be their hero still. But beneath the facade lies an unraveling—failure gnaws at me. I am hollowed by grief and fear. I stagger through days with an appetite gone cold and clothes worn thin, shadows of a life once warmer, lighter. I am weak, and I know it. But strength is all they see, so I wear the mask.
This fear is a storm whispering terrible futures—the fragility of their recovery, the looming threat that a single wrong strike could shatter what little remains of their wandering minds. It is a terror that clings to every breath and heartbeat.
And then there is guilt, a relentless companion. The knowledge that, a year ago, we could have left—escaped. But I stayed. I stayed for my people, for my patients, for Gaza itself. I stayed in the rubble and despair, believing that my hands, my medicine, my presence mattered here.
But the quiet confession weighs heavily: did I choose wrong? Did my love for my people condemn my children to a fractured life? They deserved a childhood beyond sirens, beyond shattered walls. I wanted to protect them, to build a family unbroken. But I could not armor them from this war.
What haunts me most is the chasm between the family we were and the brokenness now. Love does not always shield, not always save. Sometimes love means staying when you want to run, and sometimes hurt follows you home.
So here I stand, or falter—a father marked by loss and love, caught between survival and surrender. I carry their voices in my heart, their fragile bodies in my care. I am not okay. I do not know what comes next. But in this darkness, I keep reaching—for them, for hope, for a future where their laughter will once again fill the air without fear.