For 15 months now, Gaza’s children have been reduced to a statistic. The death toll reported gives a specific count for children. Malnourishment and starvation are reported in terms of numbers of children they have affected and killed. Even the cold weather is measured in terms of how many babies it has killed in makeshift tents.
But behind these numbers lie heartbreaking stories of Palestinian children whose childhood has been cut short. As a nurse working at al-Shifa Medical Complex and then in a makeshift clinic in a displacement camp, I have come across so many painful stories of children suffering amid this hideous war.
Seeing so many children suffer has made the misery of trying to survive a genocide that much more unbearable.
In early November 2023, when I was on shift at the emergency department, several injured people were rushed in after yet another violent bombing. I went to attend to one of them: 10-year-old Tala.
When I checked on her, I saw that her arm had already been amputated and she had severe burns all over her body. She was crying intensely, asking about her aunt. I did not know what to say. I gave her a painkiller to calm her down a little.
I tried to talk to her and ease her tears. She told me that she had lost all her family due to a previous bombing of her house. She was not at home, so she became the only survivor. She was taken in by her aunt and was staying at her house, when a missile struck a neighbouring building. The explosion and shrapnel injured her.
As the effect of the painkiller wore off, Tala started crying hard again from the physical and mental pain of what had happened to her. It was heart-rendering to see this little girl suffering so much. She was supposed to be going to school, playing with her friends, embracing her family. And here she was all alone, in unbearable pain and grief. How was she going to continue her life?
After every visit to her bed, I cried. She stayed for two weeks at the hospital and was eventually discharged to her aunt.
Tala was just one of many children I saw at the emergency department of al-Shifa before we were banished by the Israelis at the end of November. Most of the bombing victims I treated were children. Many had injuries like Tala, some much worse than hers. The vast majority of them had seen members of their families either torn to pieces, bleeding to death or severely injured. Too many were left orphans.
When I moved to a displacement camp in the south, the suffering of children I saw did not get any less. I volunteered at a medical point in the camp, where many of the patients were children.
One day in January 2024, a worried mother came to us with her seven-year-old son, named Youssef. She told us that he had been sick for several weeks and she did not know what was hurting him. When we examined him, we determined he was suffering from viral hepatitis and that he was in the advanced stage of the disease. He was in a lot of pain, suffering from vomiting and diarrhoea, abdominal cramps and fever.
We could not do much for him. A few days later, Youssef died.
His death did not even become a statistic. He was not killed by an Israeli bomb, so he was not added to the death toll reported that day.
But he was still a victim of this genocidal war. If Gaza’s healthcare system had not been destroyed, he would have been saved.
There are other injuries children in Gaza suffer from that I, as a medical professional, cannot help with, even if I had all the medicine and all the equipment in the world. These are the psychological wounds that every single child survivor of this genocide carries.
In July, I spoke to 11-year-old Ahmad in an area in Khan Younis where children go to fly kites. I had gone there to speak to “healthy” children – those who I would not see in the makeshift clinic.
“There is nothing worse than this situation. The situation of children is like a shoe!” he told me.
I was surprised by his response and laughed.
I asked him, “What hurt you the most in this war?” He replied with eyes heavy with sadness, with one word: loss. He had lost his mother.
He recounted: “The occupation launched a crazy raid on us and bombed our entire residential block. As for my mother, I did not see her, because that day I was hit in the head with shrapnel close to the skull and was taken to intensive care. After three days, when I woke up and called my mother, they told me that Israel had killed her, simply like that.”
I controlled myself; I didn’t want to cry in front of him. I am certain that I was weaker than him in this moment.
No child deserves this miserable life. No child should suffer from a preventable disease; no child should be burned or maimed by bombs. No child should see their parents die.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
