In light of the difficult circumstances and painful events we are witnessing in the Gaza Strip, our suffering is evident at all levels, painfully and poignantly. From death to starvation, displacement, homelessness, the spread of diseases, and other disasters. Among this unbearable suffering, we find medical students who face exceptional challenges, not only in achieving their academic and professional dreams but also in the loss of their loved ones and their attempts to survive amid genocide.
One such student is Ahmed, the iced drink seller. He walked among the tents in clean and tidy clothes, along with 8-year-old Mustafa. They sold iced drinks to children and adults alike, relief from their tents’ heat. The tents reached 40 degrees Celsius inside, like agricultural greenhouses.
When Ahmed was in secondary school, he made a great effort to obtain the high grades that would enable him to achieve his and his parents’ lifelong dream: his admittance to medical school. He was successful. Ahmed was accepted to medical school at a university in Germany. He began his studies and would return to Gaza for every summer holiday. At the end of his fourth year, Ahmed returned to Gaza to spend time with his family and to get engaged to a girl who lived near his house in the neighboring suburb. Two days before his planned departure to Germany, the war began. Ahmed decided to stay with his parents until the end of the war, which he thought would not take more than a month. The first and second months passed, and the third was almost coming to an end but the war was not over yet. During that period, Ahmed and his family were dying while they were still alive. They suffered from hunger, thirst, and displacement. They were displaced more than ten times and were at risk of death at any given moment. There was nothing available to eat except for bird feed, livestock feed, dog food, and cat food.
In the end, Ahmed’s family decided to return to their home in the Al-Tuffah neighborhood east of Gaza City, exhausted by their frequent displacement. All paths were blocked: there was nowhere left to be displaced. Within the first three months of the war, the Zionist Occupation had destroyed more than 80% of buildings and structures designed to shelter displaced persons. No inch of northern Gaza was safe.
Two weeks after returning to their home, on Jan. 4 at the beginning of the new year, an Israeli Occupation aircraft targeted the family’s area with open fire. This led to the destruction of all homes in the neighborhood and in the neighboring suburb where Ahmed’s fiancée lived. Israeli aircraft targeted ambulances and civil defense crews, so the injured could not be rescued. After three hours of bombing, young men from the area were able to pull Ahmed out from under the rubble of his house. His left hand was injured. He was taken to the hospital in a cart pulled by a donkey. Later, he learned that he was the sole survivor of his family, and Mustafa was the only survivor of his fiancée’s family.
A week later, Ahmed and Mustafa – who had nobody left in the world but each other – were able to escape from the north to the south by coordinating with one of the merchants assigned to transport medical aid to the northern Gaza Strip with the Israeli Occupation Forces. At the time, the army had blocked all roads it claimed were safe routes. They went to Ahmed’s great uncle’s house in Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip at the uncle’s insistence. However, Ahmed decided to take Mustafa and depart his uncle’s home after two months because he could not work to help with the cost of food and water for the family. Mustafa and Ahmed moved to a friend’s house in Deir al-Balah. Ahmed’s friend owned a solar panel fridge, and he used to freeze bags of drinks for his family. Ahmed suggested that he could sell bags of iced drinks and share the profits with his friend. His friend agreed, and from that day on Ahmed made a career of selling drinks. He began to wander among the tents of the displaced with Mustafa, selling people drinks so he and Mustafa could secure food for themselves. After a while, Ahmed was able to get a tent for him and Mustafa to settle into. He was beginning to feel some stability, until two months later when they were forced to evacuate. The Israeli Occupation Forces threatened their area of Deir al-Balah, so he headed to Bureij (northeast of Deir al-Balah city), carrying the tent with him. Bureij was also facing Israeli threats.
Ahmed lost his family, his fiancée and his friends. His dreams collapsed like the buildings that collapsed under the weight of the war. His hopes turned to ashes among the flames of fire and destruction in Gaza. Ahmed’s story is only one of many, an embodiment of the suffering of an entire generation of ambitious youth in Gaza.
