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 biggest, 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 at 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 got into al-Shifa as a volunteer nurse.
I loved my job at the emergency department very much. I went to work with passion and positive energy every day. I would meet patients with a wide smile, hoping to relieve some of their pain. I always loved to hear patients’ prayers for me in gratitude.
In the emergency department, we were 80 nurses in total – both 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 did shifts together and went out for coffee outside of work. She was a beautiful girl who was very kind and loved by everyone.
It was such friendships and the comradery among the staff that helped me pull through when the war started.
From the very first day, the hospital became overwhelmed with casualties. After my first shift ended that day, I stayed in the nurses’ room crying for an hour over everything we had been through and all the injured people I had seen suffering.
Within days there were more than a thousand wounded and martyrs in the hospital. The more people were brought in, the harder we worked, trying to save lives.
I never expected that this horror would last for more than a month. But it did.
Soon, the Israeli army called my family and told us that we needed to leave our home in Gaza City. I faced a difficult choice: to be with my family in this horrific time or to be with the patients who needed me the most. I decided to stay.
I bid farewell to my family who fled south to Rafah and I stayed behind in al-Shifa Hospital, which became my second home. Alaa stayed behind as well. We supported and comforted each other.
In early November, the Israeli army told us to evacuate the hospital and laid a siege to it. Our medical supplies started to dwindle. We were quickly running out of fuel for our electricity generators that were keeping life-saving equipment going.
Perhaps the most heartbreaking moment was when we ran out of fuel and oxygen and we could no longer keep the premature babies we had in our care in the incubators. We had to relocate them to an operating room where we tried to keep them warm. They were struggling to breathe and we had no oxygen to help them. We lost eight innocent babies. I remember sitting and crying for a long time that day for those innocent souls.
Then on November 15, Israeli soldiers stormed the complex. The attack came as a shock. As a medical facility, it was supposed to be protected under international law, but that clearly did not stop the Israeli army.
Just before the raid, our administration told us that they had received a call that the Israelis were about to storm the medical complex. We quickly closed the gate of the emergency department and gathered inside around the nursing desk in the middle of it, not knowing what to do. The next day, we saw Israeli soldiers surrounding the building. We could not leave and we were running out of medical supplies. We struggled to provide treatment to the patients we had with us.
We had no food or water left. I remember feeling dizzy and almost fainting. I had not eaten anything for three days. We lost some patients because of the siege and the Israeli raid.
On November 18, Dr Mohammad Abu Salmiya, al-Shifa’s director, came to tell us that the Israelis had ordered the whole medical complex to be evacuated. If I had a choice, I would have stayed, but the Israeli army did not leave me one.
Hundreds of us, doctors and nurses, were forced to leave, along with many patients. Only about two dozen staff stayed behind with bed-ridden patients who could not be moved. Dr Abu Salmiya also stayed behind and was arrested several days later. He disappeared for the next seven months.
I, along with dozens of colleagues head south per Israeli orders. Alaa and a few others defied these orders and headed north to their families. We walked for many kilometres and passed Israeli checkpoints, where we were made to wait for hours, until we were able to find a donkey cart that could transport us some 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 was able to return to her family in Beit Lahiya, who had been displaced in a school shelter. But when she and her brother went to their abandoned house to retrieve some belongings, an Israeli missile hit the building and they were martyred.
The news of her death came as an enormous shock. A year later, I still live with the pain of losing my close friend – one of the sweetest people I had ever known who loved to help others and who was always there to comfort me in difficult moments.
In March, Israeli soldiers returned to al-Shifa. For two weeks, they rampaged through the hospital, leaving behind death and devastation. Not a building was left in the medical complex that was not damaged or burned down. From a place of healing, al-Shifa was transformed into a graveyard.
I do not know how I will feel when I see the hospital again. How will I feel knowing that the place of my best professional achievements and dearest moments shared with colleagues also became a place of death, forced disappearances and displacement?
Today, more than a year after I lost my workplace, I live in a tent and care for the ill 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 used to be – grand and beautiful.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
