Despite exile, “I am still in Gaza”: haunted by the war, Asem and Mohammed, two Palestinian students welcomed in France since the fall of 2024, recount their traumatic experience and their still vague dream of a new life.
Just a few months ago, Asem Abuzarifa, 25, was treating his compatriots at Al-Chifa hospital, one of the main ones in Gaza, where he worked as an intern, in war medicine conditions.
“We had to manage a lot of patients (…) We were not prepared for this situation. We lacked equipment, medicine. Among the injured, there were many children. People complained that they were lacking everything,” he recalls in an interview with AFP.
The young man with impeccable looks and a contagious smile is one of four Gazan students who joined the university of Lille, in the north of France, at the start of the school year.
In total, 32 students from Gaza have arrived in France since last summer via a “university corridor”, a system for welcoming students seeking international protection, explains Emmanuelle Jourdan-Chartier, vice-president of student life. from the University of Lille.
In addition to Al-Chifa, targeted by Israeli military operations criticized by international NGOs and the UN, Asem also worked for a few months in a hospital in Rafah, in the south of the Gaza Strip, before obtaining his diploma. He then left for Cairo, with the idea of moving abroad to realize his dream of becoming a cardiologist.
There, he came across an online announcement of a French scholarship open to students from Gaza. Three weeks later, his application is accepted, he obtains his visa and then arrives in France. His first night in his university room, finally safe and quiet, was “one of the most beautiful moments” of his life, he says.
In Lille, Asem distanced himself from news from the Middle East and social networks. “Maybe it’s a defense mechanism,” he thinks.
The young doctor, however, keeps in touch with his family and friends: “I miss them all.” And when he talks about his twin brother who remained in Egypt, he bursts into tears, his absence weighs so much on him.
-Mohammed Alaloul, 22, another Gazan welcomed in Lille, also struggles to hide his trauma from the war, which forced him to stop his studies in finance.
He also passed through Al-Chifa, as a stretcher bearer, at the start of the war against Israel.
“My family left for the south (of the Gaza Strip, Editor’s note) and I stayed in the north because I felt that the hospital needed volunteers,” he explains.
“I saw horrible scenes. I saw death with my own eyes, but at the same time I was determined to save” lives.
Mohammed lasts a few months, then leaves for the South. In a refugee camp, he leads dabke workshops, a traditional dance in Palestine, to “bring joy to this misfortune”. “We had to do something especially for the children, so that we could live in the present.”
“I walked 6 to 8 km every day to reach this refugee camp” sometimes to “just dance with the children (…). There was no electricity, no water, and the dancing remained possible”.
In April 2024, a new departure, this time for Cairo. He also won a scholarship from the French government there.
He is now rebuilding himself far from his family, part of which is in Egypt, the other still in Gaza. “I know what they survived (…), I think about it every day.”
For four semesters, Gazan students will take French courses before eventually being able to study in France.
Mohammed wants to focus on learning French first before thinking about the next steps. He also won a grant for an artistic residency in Avignon this year, in order to put on a dabké show.
But if Gaza one day becomes “livable again, then I would definitely go back,” he says. “I’m still in Gaza, I left but it’s like I’m still living in Gaza.”
