Shaïma Al Ghol does not take her eyes off the television screen above her hospital bed. With her mouth agape, she watches images from the Qatari channel Al-Jazeera showing the rubble of the latest Israeli bombings in the Gaza Strip. “My family is still theresaid this 33-year-old Palestinian woman, her two bandaged legs lying on the bed. I am here in Doha, but my father, my brother, my mother, my sister and her family all live in a tent in Rafah. How can you not follow the news? »
Shaima’s house, located in the south of the Gaza Strip, was bombed on February 12. Her husband, Abdallah, their daughter, Jinan, aged 10, and their son, Mohamed, 15, were all killed. Since March 18, with her two living children, Hodayfa and Maryam, and her sister-in-law, Shaïma has been in Qatar, hospitalized at Hamad hospital, specializing in surgery. Since the start of the war with the Jewish state on October 7, 2023, following the bloody Hamas attack in Israel, Qatar has evacuated more than 2,300 Gazans, including around 800 for reasons medical.
On her cell phone, the young woman shows a video of Hodayfa, filmed just after the bombing of their house. The face and body of the 10-year-old boy are covered in dust, having just been pulled out by a neighbor from the rubble of the collapsed building. “My brothers and sisters and my parents are trapped under the rubble”, he shouts in tears. Another photo, carefully saved in Shaïma’s phone and which went viral, shows the lifeless body of her daughter Jinan, hanging on a wall following the explosion.
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The survivor of the bombing was unconscious for days, her legs and back riddled with shrapnel from munitions. She underwent 47 operations. His son, who walks with a crutch, around ten. With her face still smiling, Shaïma explains that her late husband “hasn’t come yet” in his dreams. “But my brother saw it once. Abdallah gave him a chocolate for me. And, another time, his niece saw him. Abdallah asked him how I was. But why doesn’t he come and see me directly? He will come eventually. Yes. Inshallah! »
” Which house ? »
When asked how, after so much drama, she still manages to smile, Shaïma raises her voice: “You want me to cry?” Crying has never helped us. If I cry in front of my children, they will break down. » Hodayfa cries at night. His mother tries to distract him. She herself broke down once, when her children went to a shopping center near the hospital.
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