CAIRO — “Your apartment still exists. The wedding party will happen on time, God willing,” Aden’s mother said, trying to calm his shock. It was the first phone call they were able to make after three days of communications outages due to the Gaza war. Amid the sounds of bombardments and drones, the mother reassured Aden about the family.
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“We survived… Thank God,” she said. He reassured her that he was also safe, but trapped in his workplace in Gaza City, which was severely bombed.
“The war will end before the wedding, God willing,” the mother said in a hopeful, unrealistic tone. The family had set November 5 as the date of Aden’s wedding party.
From wedding plans to war
The war has turned Aden’s family from people who worked and dreamed of a future, marriage, and raising children — despite the stifling siege imposed on Gaza before the war — to displaced people. They are among the more than 1.9 million Palestinians who have been forced to leave their homes since the war began on October 7.
I had gotten to know Aden, who is a journalist, before Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on southern Israel, dubbed “Al-Aqsa Flood.” I have become concerned about his fate and that of his family amid the relentless bombardment of Gaza, and the repeated communication blackouts. I was overwhelmed by pressing questions: Is he still alive? Did he lose any of his family or friends? Where is he? How is he living?
“We didn’t know that it would become a genocide in every sense of the word.”
Communications were temporarily restored.
On the morning of October 7, Aden woke up around 8 a.m., after a fitful sleep. In the days before the war, he was busy organizing his upcoming marriage, along with other family responsibilities. Aden and one of his brothers were responsible for the family following their father’s death in 2017. They all lived in a four-story house in the town of Jabaliya, in northern Gaza. Their living conditions before the war were “very difficult,” Aden said, “The family had no source of income except what I earned from my work, and from my brother’s work as an interior designer.”
Aden said would divide his salary in half: one half for the family, and the second to prepare his apartment. He would walk to work in Gaza City to “save a few shekels.”
Lives turned upside down
Within hours after dawn on October 7, his family’s plans changed until further notice — and may be changed forever.
When he heard about Al-Aqsa Flood attack, Aden, who works as a photojournalist said he rushed from his workplace. “I didn’t pick up my personal ID or press pass,” he recalls. Through his camera, he began to document the misery and tragedy of his people. At the time, “we didn’t know that it would become a genocide in every sense of the word,” he said.
Aden had no news from his family since leaving for work that morning. For three days, he tried to find out anything about them to no avail.
“A few meters keep us apart, but the fire [bombings] surrounded us,” Aden said. He said the Israeli occupation forces bombed most of the communications towers and cut off the network, disrupting communications.
When communications were restored on October 10, Aden learned that his family was safe but had been forced to leave their home due to bombardments nearby. They had left on October 8, hoping that their displacement would be short. They had walked only 200 meters when they heard a loud explosion. They looked back to find that their house was cut in two: one half was flattened to the ground, and the second remained standing. Aden’s apartment was turned into rubble.
In search of shelter, the family – which includes many children and a sick elderly mother – walked for 2 kilometers amid relentless bombardment west of the town of Jabaliya.
Sifa Saga
As the family fled the bombing, Adan carried his photo equipment, covering the bombing and the destruction left behind. He was sheltering in the bathroom of the Shifa hospital, Gaza’s largest, along with thousands of other displaced people.
“In the [Shifa] complex, we would wait for three days to eat one meal, and the same to receive water,” he recalled.
On November 2, when Adan should have been preparing for his wedding party, he was in Shifa hospital thinking about his family and afraid for his life, due to both the bombing and starvation.
The tallies didn’t tell me anything about Aden and only fueled the questions burning in my head.
When I asked him about the humanitarian aid said to be delivered to northern Gaza, he said, “Nothing. We receive little f….” and communications went down.
For 36 days, I kept checking Messenger. I closely followed the war’s developments and the danger approaching Shifa hospital, which occupation forces raided on November 15, leaving many dead and wounded.
Partly United
The tallies didn’t tell me anything about Aden and only fueled the questions burning in my head. Then, on December 6, I received a message from him saying that he was safe along with some of his family members in displaced shelters in Gaza’s southernmost town of Rafah, on the Egyptian border.
I quickly called him.
“The bombing of Jabaliya began to expand over the days, reaching the area where my family was sheltered,” he said. “They were forced to leave again on October 20 after my nephew and my brother’s wife were injured by the rubble of bombed buildings.” The family thought that east of Jabaliya was safer. Because it had already been destroyed, they thought it would not be bombed again. They packed what was left of their belongings and made their return journey on foot again. On October 22, after sleeping two nights outside, the family split into two groups: The first group continued to eastern Jabaliya. And the second group went to south Gaza.
Aden learned these details on October 24, when his brother told him about the horrors the family experienced. “When I learned what had happened, I cried. I wished I could communicate with them to persuade them to leave with the rest. My mother wanted to return to her house and stay there,” Aden said.
The southbound group slept two more nights outside. Their stock of bread and water ran out before reaching shelter in the south. At the time, Aden was documenting the injuries arriving at Shifa hospital. He was forced to leave the facility when it was bombed on November 10. “I was forced – like the others – to evacuate to the south,” he said of his evacuation after 36 days of war. “We left the complex and kept walking until we found the occupation forces. They asked us to put our hands up, show our IDs and walk in a corridor lined with tanks on both sides,” he said.
Moving south
He continued his trip on foot to the southern city of Khan Younis. On November 11, he met with his family members who had fled south, in the Nasser hospital in Khan Younis where thousands of displaced people were sheltered. Aden stayed in a shelter close to Nasser hospital. At the time Khan Younis was calm compared to Gaza city, he said, but the calm didn’t last long. After the six-day truce ended on December 1, occupation forces began an intense bombing campaign on Khan Younis. “The situation has become extremely difficult,” he said. “We are overcrowded in a shrinking area.”
“The situation has turned from bad to worse.”
As fighting and bombing intensified in Khan Younis, Aden and his family members fled to Rafah thinking it would be safer. “We had only the clothes we were wearing and it was raining,” he said, “We slept in camps for displaced people” in Rafah. However, Aden’s hope of safety in Rafah was dashed. The Israeli military repeatedly bombed the town, killing and wounding many people including displaced families. “The situation has turned from bad to worse,” he said.
But Rafah wasn’t worse than the northern part of the strip, where the rest of his family, including his mother, are sheltered in tents amid extremely dire conditions.
“People there were drinking rainwater. There was no drinking water. Certainly there is a famine there,” he said.
On December 22, Aden wrote on Facebook, mourning his niece who was killed by a strike that killed 13 people and wounded many others including, Aden’s mother and his family members. Three children of his family have had their legs amputated, he said.
As the war continues, Aden’s family remains separated. Half is still trapped in the north, wounded and starving. Aden and the rest are crammed in the south in similarly harrowing conditions.
