When I started studying nursing at Al Azhar University, I knew I wanted to work at al-Shifa Hospital. It was my dream.
It was the largest and most prestigious hospital in the Gaza Strip. Some of the best doctors and nurses in Palestine worked there. Various foreign medical missions would come and provide training and care there as well.
Many people from the north to the south of the Gaza Strip sought medical help in al-Shifa. The name of the hospital means “healing” in Arabic and indeed, it was a place of healing for the Palestinians of Gaza.
In 2020, I graduated from nursing school and tried to find a job in the private sector. After several short-term jobs, I joined al-Shifa as a volunteer nurse.
I really loved my job in the emergency department. Every day I went to work with passion and positive energy. I would meet patients with a big smile, hoping to ease some of their pain. I have always loved to hear patients pray for me in gratitude.
There were a total of 80 of us nurses in the emergency department – women and men – and we were all friends. In fact, some of my closest friends were colleagues at the hospital. Alaa was one of them. We worked shifts together and went for coffee outside of work. She was a beautiful girl who was loved by everyone.
Such friendship and camaraderie among the staff helped me survive when the war started.
From the first day, the hospital was overwhelmed with victims. After my first shift of the day ended, I stayed in the nurses’ room for an hour crying because of everything we had been through and all the injured people I had seen suffering.
In a few days, there were more than a thousand wounded and martyrs in the hospital. The more people were brought in, the more we worked, trying to save lives.
I didn’t expect this horror to last more than a month. But it is.
Soon the Israeli army called my family and told us that we had to leave our home in Gaza. I was faced with a difficult choice: to be with my family in this terrible time or to be with the patients who needed me the most. I decided to stay.
I said goodbye to my family who had fled south to Rafah and I stayed at al-Shifa hospital, which became my second home. Alaa also stayed. We supported and comforted each other.
In early November, the Israeli army told us to evacuate the hospital and set up a siege. Our medical supplies began to dwindle. We were quickly running out of fuel for our power generators that maintained the lifesaving equipment.
Perhaps the most heartbreaking moment was when we ran out of fuel and oxygen and could no longer hold the premature babies we had in the incubators. We had to move them to the operating theater where we tried to warm them up. They were struggling to breathe and we had no oxygen to help them. We lost eight innocent babies. I remember sitting for a long time that day and crying for those innocent souls.
Then, on November 15, Israeli soldiers stormed the compound. The attack was a shock. As a medical facility, it should have been protected by international law, but that apparently didn’t stop the Israeli army.
Just before the raid, our management told us that they had received a call that the Israelis were about to storm the medical complex. We quickly closed the door to the ER and gathered inside around the nurses table in the middle, not knowing what to do. The next day we saw Israeli soldiers surrounding the building. We couldn’t leave and we were running out of medical supplies. We struggled to provide treatment to the patients we had with us.
We had no more food or water. I remember feeling dizzy and almost passed out. I didn’t eat anything for three days. We lost some patients due to the siege and the Israeli attack.
On November 18, dr. Mohammad Abu Salmiya, director of al-Shifa, came to tell us that the Israelis ordered the entire medical complex to be evacuated. If I had a choice, I would have stayed, but the Israeli army did not leave it to me.
Hundreds of us doctors and nurses were forced to leave, along with many patients. Only about twenty staff were left with lying patients who could not move. dr. Abu Salmiya also stayed behind and was arrested a few days later. He disappeared for the next seven months.
I, along with dozens of colleagues, are heading south according to Israeli orders. Alaa and a few others defied these orders and headed north with their families. We walked many kilometers and passed Israeli checkpoints, where we had to wait for hours, until we managed to find a donkey cart that could take us part of the way.
When we finally arrived in Rafah, I was beyond happy to see my family. There was a lot of crying and relief. But the happiness of being with my family was soon overshadowed by shocking news.
Alaa managed to return to her family in Beit Lahiya, who were displaced in the school shelter. But when she and her brother went to their abandoned house to get some belongings, an Israeli missile hit the building and they were killed.
The news of her death was a great shock. A year later, I’m still living with the pain of losing my close friend – one of the sweetest people I’ve ever met, who loved to help others and was always there to comfort me in difficult times.
In March, Israeli soldiers returned to al-Shifa. Two weeks, they gone wild through the hospital, leaving behind death and destruction. There is no building left in the medical complex that has not been damaged or burned. From a place of healing, al-Shifa was turned into a cemetery.
I don’t know how I’ll feel when I see the hospital again. How will I feel knowing that the place of my best professional achievements and favorite moments shared with colleagues has also become a place of death, enforced disappearances and displacement?
Today, more than a year after I lost my job, I live in a tent and take care of the sick in a makeshift clinic. My future, our future is uncertain. But in the new year I have a dream: to see al-Shifa as it once was – magnificent and beautiful.
The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.
