The surgical gloves alone show that everything is missing. When Fady Hussam operates at the University Hospital of Münster, he first has to go through the dressing room before standing at the operating table. He puts on surgical pants, shoes, a hood and a mask. Washes hands and forearms. Dry. Disinfect. He then enters the operating room and puts on a sterile gown and gloves.
When the surgeon offered to help at Al-Shifa Hospital in Rimal, the largest hospital in Gaza City, he felt more like he was in a refugee home, he said in a voice message. Many people whose homes were destroyed by Israeli rocket attacks seek shelter there. They sleep in the hallways and stairwells. The staff works under the most unfavorable conditions: electricity that only comes from generators that constantly fail. Patients with the most severe injuries and trauma. Wounds full of splinters. Wounds being cleaned with water that wouldn’t even be drinkable. “But you only have this water.” Operating rooms in which two people are operated on at the same time. Colleagues who find out in the middle of their shift that family members have been murdered – and still continue.
Hussam cannot change his gloves during his entire shift, he says. There aren’t enough of them there. His descriptions cannot be verified. However, they correspond with what employees of humanitarian aid organizations in the Gaza Strip also report.
Hussam did not travel to the Gaza Strip as a volunteer. He has lived in Germany for more than 20 years and studied medicine in Heidelberg. He was born in Gaza City and his parents, siblings, aunts and uncles, cousins still live there. He hasn’t seen her in eleven years, but now he wanted to visit her. His father suffered a stroke earlier this year. The family only knew his wife, three-year-old daughter and eight-month-old son through video calls. In early October, the four traveled to Gaza via Egypt and the Rafah border crossing. Then on October 7, Hamas attacked Israel.
Since then, Hussam has been trying to leave the Gaza Strip and get his wife and children to safety. From Germany, his ex-wife Jannah Nasser, with whom he has two ten-year-old daughters, and one of his brothers try to keep in touch. ZEIT ONLINE has been in contact with Hussam since October 17, mainly via voice messages. The network connection is interrupted repeatedly.
Every report about Gaza means grueling questions for the family
“Are you OK?” Jannah Nasser sometimes does not receive a response to these types of WhatsApp messages for hours. That’s why she rarely puts down her cell phone. Two blue check marks behind a message become a ray of hope. Just a twist on the horror. Reports from the Gaza Strip about bombings, a shortage of drinking water and an incipient ground offensive raise debilitating questions for them: was Hussam’s family home also hit? Can the children even sleep? How many glasses of clean water do you drink per day? How many small pieces should you cut a loaf into?
In the past, Nasser and Hussam usually only wrote about the children, to agree on which weekend they would spend with him. The families live in the same place, a small town in Baden-Württemberg. Now they are in contact every day, at least they try. While Nasser is talking in her living room, her cell phone rings. She is an employee of Hussam’s three-year-old daughter’s preschool. Nasser should ask for the contract to be suspended until the family returns. «Okay, yes. The situation is really very difficult,” she says on the phone. “It doesn’t look like they will be able to leave the country anytime soon.” The girls’ lunch has now been cancelled. Her first day there was in September.
Nasser says she and her daughters initially did not know Hussam was traveling to Gaza. He only talked about a holiday in Egypt. Only when she wrote to him after October 7 to ask about his family in Gaza City did he say they were there too. One of her daughters then said: “Huh, in Gaza? But daddy, there’s a war going on.’
“It was breathtaking,” says Nasser. “I didn’t know how to handle it in front of the kids.” The two had watched the news with her. They knew bad things were happening in the Gaza Strip. “And now suddenly I had to change my face and say, ‘No, it’s okay, they’re safe’.” But Hussam’s request was clear: “Keep it away from the children.” The names of him, Nasser and other family members have therefore been changed in this text.
Her ex-husband is actually a level-headed and composed person, always far-sighted, always with a clear point of view, says Nasser. He can still act like that in front of the kids. “He always acted well on the phone”: The family is together in a large, beautiful group. Yes, there’s a bombing going on, but it’s all far away and they won’t notice.
However, in conversations with her he sometimes seemed confused and hopeless. He no longer knows what the future holds. Hussam also tells ZEIT ONLINE in a voice message. When his three-year-old daughter first heard the explosions, he told her, “A balloon burst.” But even small children would know when something was wrong. He sees the fear in her eyes. “I don’t know how we’re going to deal with all this with the kids when we get out of here.”
The Gaza Strip, about 45 kilometers long, six to fourteen kilometers wide and very densely populated with more than 2.2 million people, has been completely closed off for years. Rafah, on the border with Egypt, is the only border crossing not controlled by Israel. Since the Hamas attack, it was initially only opened to aid convoys. However, Hussam and his family are trapped.
He received messages several times from the Foreign Ministry representative office in Ramallah that there was a possible exit window at the Rafah border crossing. But when they got there, it didn’t go any further every time. “We stood in the blazing sun, there were no toilets,” says Hussam. No one could give them information, the internet didn’t work, the children were screaming. They eventually returned, always at the risk of being shot at along the way, he says.
Fady Hussam traveled south from Gaza City to Deir al-Balah with his wife and two small children. His wife’s uncle lives there. They want to stay close to the border crossing in case an opportunity to leave the country arises. There were currently 19 men, 21 women and 18 children in the multi-story home with five apartments, Hussam said. They stood in lines hundreds of meters long for bread. If it is bombed, it will disappear for a short time. “But two minutes later people are queuing again. It has become routine.”
Hussam’s relatives are disappointed with the German state
When asked, the Foreign Ministry only briefly stated that it was “working intensively” to enable German citizens to leave Gaza. A low three-digit number of German citizens are currently registered in Gaza on their crisis preparedness list.
Samer Hussam, a brother of Fady who also lives in Germany, feels abandoned by the German state. «I had the feeling on the phone that my brother wanted to cry. I am powerless just like him. We both have a German passport, but that is not of much use to us,” he says on the phone. He had to call in sick to work. Sometimes he stays in front of the television until six in the morning to reach family and friends “I grew up with war, but this is different.”
On Wednesday morning, people left the Gaza Strip for the first time. 90 seriously injured Palestinians were taken to Egypt via the Rafah border crossing. According to Egyptian authorities, 500 foreigners and Palestinians with second passports, including German nationals working for international NGOs, followed in the afternoon. However, on the same day, Hussam received this message from the Foreign Ministry’s liaison office in Ramallah: “It is not yet possible today for German citizens to leave the country via Rafah. Please stay in a safe place.”
But nowhere in the Gaza Strip is safe, says ex-wife Nasser. There are no cellars or hiding places. She is concerned about Hussam’s wife, who is not yet a German citizen and only has Palestinian papers. “It doesn’t matter, the important thing is that the kids come out,” she replied. Nasser has tears in her eyes when she talks about it.
She also worries about her own children. “They have war in their DNA,” says Nasser. She fears that they will both grow up with great anger despite all the injustice. Because – no matter how hard her ex-husband tries – they know exactly what is going on. At the same time, they wanted to believe what their father said. That everything is going well. ‘Your father is so stubborn. If there is a soldier in front of him, believe me, he will simply persuade him to let him through,” Nasser told them.
Her ex-husband writes a message on Friday morning. The names of the four are finally on a list to leave Egypt. At first she doesn’t know whether they are already on their way to the border crossing at Rafah. The internet has disappeared. It wasn’t until the evening that the short, relieving news came: they got out.
This article first appeared on Zeit Online. Watson may have changed the headings and subheadings. Click here for the original.
Soource :Watson
I am Amelia James, a passionate journalist with a deep-rooted interest in current affairs. I have more than five years of experience in the media industry, working both as an author and editor for 24 Instant News. My main focus lies in international news, particularly regional conflicts and political issues around the world.
