Faten resisted a strong urge to return to her tent as she dragged along her little girl, who had pockmarks all over her body. She resisted visiting the famous old man — who was displaced in the same camp as her, her husband and their three children — but to no avail. Faten had heard of this miracle worker with a growing reputation for treating a variety of ailments. Some people called him a “blessed” man, while others claimed that he dealt with djinn and the unseen spirit world.
This man — who was famed for his healing powers in Gaza’s al-Zaiton neighborhood, before his forced displacement to Deir al-Balah — decided to continue his practice in spite of the circumstances. Just as people visited his house in Gaza City, they also sought the old man’s tent in Deir al-Balah’s displacement camp… especially his old neighbors, who recognized him. As the Israeli regime continues its destruction of Gaza’s hospitals and clinics, the old man is the closest substitute in the absence of medical provisions.
Facing the old man — his fingernails long, his clothes dirty — Faten presented her daughter for a check up. As he took a closer look at her skin cratered with blisters, the little girl’s blood ran cold. The old man then grabbed a worn sack wrapped around a small vial and handed it to Faten.
“This is sulfur powder,” he explained, addressing Faten. “All you have to do is rub it on your daughter’s body twice a day. She will heal quickly afterwards.”
“This dirty scabbing happens to children when they do not bathe,” he added. “Why do you not let her wash up in the sea like the rest of the children?”
Faten did not respond. She grabbed her daughter and paid the old man the last of her money before rushing out. When she got back to her tent, she did as she was told and rubbed the powder on her daughter. While her girl moaned from the sulfur, Faten got lost in the memories of the days when medical emergencies meant immediate trips to the hospital and doctor visits. Her tears began to drop.
Faten remembered the many times her children got sick throughout the genocide. She remembered how she could not find any medical resources, besides a woman who knew how to “cut off fear” – a traditional lymphatic massage method – for when a child has fever. She remembered how she would ask the woman to massage the back of her child’s neck with olive oil to relieve their earache, which she knew full well was not a simple earache. It was tonsillitis. A massage is no real way to treat this inflammation.
The next morning, Faten was surprised. Her daughter’s pockmarks were healing and she was not scratching away at her skin like before. In that moment, Faten remembered her grandfather explaining how farmers would tend to the same skin issues in their livestock. Donkeys, mules and cows were all treated with sulfur powder, cheaply bought from the local apothecaries. She sighed, thinking about what their life has become. Still, Faten was relieved to see her daughter’s skin begin to heal.
Soon after, Faten’s neighbor called for her to join in a sea bathing party for the children. She told Faten that seawater remedies all types of skin diseases, and that bathing in the sea is a great way to save drinking water. She then came closer to Faten and whispered that seawater also treats gynecological diseases, such as genital infections, whose medicines were both expensive and in short supply due to the siege.
While the children played and bathed in the sea close to a shoreline congested with tents, the neighbor — Umm Haitham — told Faten about an elderly woman in the camp, which they had named “The Returnees’ Camp.” The old woman treats other women with the herbs and roots she collects from around the area. She knows them by sight or feeling, Umm Haitham explained, adding that some of her patients had stopped bleeding and evaded miscarriages because of the old woman’s herbs.
Faten paid these words no mind, but silently knew they held some truth. Umm Haitham kept speaking about the old woman’s odd herbal treatments, Faten suddenly asked if she had any lice treatment. With the lack of personal hygiene products — even basic soap — lice were common and expected. Umm Haitham answered, saying that women are either buying ginseng oil from apothecaries in Deir al-Bala or Khan Younis. “It’s an old known remedy,” she went on to explain.
In the evening, Faten and her husband would speak about all these amazing remedies. Her husband told her that the old man would write on the temple of a child, and their inflammation or fever would eventually lessen. Her husband also wondered how such treatments worked and if any psychological factors played a part.
Faten was lost in thought at this point of their conversation. Her husband dropped his head. Looking at the sand beneath his feet, he sighed: “who would believe that I, despite my education and a bachelor's in medical laboratory sciences, would be led toward these superstitions?”
Faten did not reply, but in her heart, she knew the depth to which her family had fallen. Thousands like Faten’s family in Gaza face the same displacement, where congestion, poverty, lack of medicine and the general collapse of the medical system have all pushed people in search of substitutes. Remedies that either work or — when they do not — cause further damage. Ultimately, these homeopathic treatments are some of the last strands of hope in the face of despair.
Despite these substitutes, as the genocide continues, diseases are spreading rapidly with the presence of insects and the increase in temperature that has transformed these camps into ovens, especially during the day.
Faten does her best to look after her children. Still, she cannot be certain that she will not need to go back to the old man, who gave her a vial of sulfur powder for the last of her money.
