After I began learning nursing at Al Azhar College, I knew I needed to work at al-Shifa Hospital. It was my dream.
It was the largest, most prestigious hospital within the Gaza Strip. Among the finest medical doctors and nurses in Palestine labored there. Numerous overseas medical missions would come and supply coaching and care there as properly.
Many individuals from the north to the south of the Gaza Strip sought medical assist at al-Shifa. The title of the hospital means “therapeutic” in Arabic and certainly, it was a spot of therapeutic for the Palestinians of Gaza.
In 2020, I graduated from nursing college and tried to discover a job within the non-public sector. After a number of short-term jobs, I acquired into al-Shifa as a volunteer nurse.
I liked my job on the emergency division very a lot. I went to work with ardour and constructive vitality each day. I might meet sufferers with a large smile, hoping to alleviate a few of their ache. I all the time liked to listen to sufferers’ prayers for me in gratitude.
Within the emergency division, we have been 80 nurses in whole – each ladies and men – and we have been all pals. The truth is, a few of my closest pals have been colleagues on the hospital. Alaa was considered one of them. We did shifts collectively and went out for espresso outdoors of labor. She was a wonderful woman who was very form and liked by everybody.
It was such friendships and the comradery among the many employees that helped me pull via when the conflict began.
From the very first day, the hospital turned overwhelmed with casualties. After my first shift ended that day, I stayed within the nurses’ room crying for an hour over the whole lot we had been via and all of the injured folks I had seen struggling.
Inside days there have been greater than a thousand wounded and martyrs within the hospital. The extra folks have been introduced in, the tougher we labored, making an attempt to save lots of lives.
I by no means anticipated that this horror would final for greater than a month. But it surely did.
Quickly, the Israeli military known as my household and informed us that we would have liked to depart our house in Gaza Metropolis. I confronted a troublesome alternative: to be with my household on this horrific time or to be with the sufferers who wanted me probably the most. I made a decision to remain.
I bid farewell to my household who fled south to Rafah and I stayed behind in al-Shifa Hospital, which turned my second house. Alaa stayed behind as properly. We supported and comforted one another.
In early November, the Israeli military informed us to evacuate the hospital and laid a siege to it. Our medical provides began to dwindle. We have been shortly operating out of gasoline for our electrical energy turbines that have been maintaining life-saving tools going.
Maybe probably the most heartbreaking second was after we ran out of gasoline and oxygen and we might not maintain the untimely infants we had in our care within the incubators. We needed to relocate them to an working room the place we tried to maintain them heat. They have been struggling to breathe and we had no oxygen to assist them. We misplaced eight harmless infants. I keep in mind sitting and crying for a very long time that day for these harmless souls.
Then on November 15, Israeli troopers stormed the advanced. The assault got here as a shock. As a medical facility, it was speculated to be protected underneath worldwide legislation, however that clearly didn’t cease the Israeli military.
Simply earlier than the raid, our administration informed us that that they had acquired a name that the Israelis have been about to storm the medical advanced. We shortly closed the gate of the emergency division and gathered inside across the nursing desk in the course of it, not figuring out what to do. The following day, we noticed Israeli troopers surrounding the constructing. We couldn’t go away and we have been operating out of medical provides. We struggled to offer remedy to the sufferers we had with us.
We had no meals or water left. I keep in mind feeling dizzy and virtually fainting. I had not eaten something for 3 days. We misplaced some sufferers due to the siege and the Israeli raid.
On November 18, Dr Mohammad Abu Salmiya, al-Shifa’s director, got here to inform us that the Israelis had ordered the entire medical advanced to be evacuated. If I had a alternative, I might have stayed, however the Israeli military didn’t go away me one.
Lots of of us, medical doctors and nurses, have been pressured to depart, together with many sufferers. Solely about two dozen employees stayed behind with bed-ridden sufferers who couldn’t be moved. Dr Abu Salmiya additionally stayed behind and was arrested a number of days later. He disappeared for the following seven months.
I, together with dozens of colleagues head south per Israeli orders. Alaa and some others defied these orders and headed north to their households. We walked for a lot of kilometres and handed Israeli checkpoints, the place we have been made to attend for hours, till we have been capable of finding a donkey cart that would transport us among the method.
Once we lastly arrived in Rafah, I used to be past completely happy to see my household. There was plenty of crying and aid. However the happiness of being with my household was quickly overshadowed by stunning information.
Alaa was in a position to return to her household in Beit Lahiya, who had been displaced in a college shelter. However when she and her brother went to their deserted home to retrieve some belongings, an Israeli missile hit the constructing and so they have been martyred.
The information of her demise got here as an infinite shock. A yr later, I nonetheless dwell with the ache of shedding my shut pal – one of many sweetest folks I had ever identified who liked to assist others and who was all the time there to consolation me in troublesome moments.
In March, Israeli troopers returned to al-Shifa. For 2 weeks, they rampaged via the hospital, abandoning demise and devastation. Not a constructing was left within the medical advanced that was not broken or burned down. From a spot of therapeutic, al-Shifa was reworked right into a graveyard.
I have no idea how I’ll really feel after I see the hospital once more. How will I really feel figuring out that the place of my finest skilled achievements and dearest moments shared with colleagues additionally turned a spot of demise, pressured disappearances and displacement?
At the moment, greater than a yr after I misplaced my office, I dwell in a tent and look after the unwell in a makeshift clinic. My future, our future is unsure. However within the new yr, I’ve a dream: to see al-Shifa because it was – grand and delightful.
The views expressed on this article are the writer’s personal and don’t essentially replicate Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
