Gaza Herald_ In a harrowing account from Al-Shifa Hospital, 41-year-old Mohammed al-Da’alasa discovered that his three-year-old nephew was still breathing while preparing to shroud the child’s body in the facility’s overcrowded morgue.
The boy had spent an entire night among the deceased following an Israeli airstrike on Gaza City’s western Shati refugee camp on October 28, 2023, which wiped out 32 members of the family, including Mohammed’s pregnant wife and seven-year-old son, Hassan.
Realizing the toddler was alive, Mohammed rushed him to intensive care, where medical teams treated him for a fractured skull, severe limb fractures, and widespread shrapnel wounds that later required reconstructive ear surgery.
Rebuilding Family Life Amidst Twin Tragedies in Gaza Camps
Now living in a displacement tent, Mohammed is raising his nephew alongside his new wife, Nuha Abu Shahema, who survived a separate airstrike that killed her entire family on October 27, 2023.
Bound by shared grief and a mutual understanding of profound loss, the couple married after the six-year-old boy formed a close bond with Nuha in the camp, coming to call her “Mama.” Together, the three survivors navigate the daily anxieties of displacement while leaning on one another for emotional recovery, fulfilling a final promise Mohammed made to his late wife to remarry and continue living.
Preserving Memory and Sustaining Resilience Through Loss
Despite physical lasting effects, including an uneven gait from the boy’s severe leg fractures, the family maintains the memory of their lost relatives through recovered photographs and charitable acts within the camp.
After retrieving images from a burned phone found in the rubble, Mohammed uses the digital archive to keep his late family’s memory alive, while the couple distributes food and bread to neighboring displaced families on anniversaries of the tragedy. Amid ongoing hardships inside their fragile shelter, the surviving uncle, aunt, and nephew remain united, constructing a sanctuary of mutual support out of the ruins of two massacres.
