Kenneth Glad
Navigating basic survival in a makeshift camp after sudden loss is a reality facing thousands of displaced families today. Daily necessities like preparing warm drinks or keeping clean quickly become exhausting physical hurdles when every familiar wall is reduced to dust. For women expecting new life amidst such devastation, the anxiety of the unknown presses heavily into every step toward tomorrow.
Eight months pregnant, Alaa Hessi navigates a shaky wooden staircase built directly over the sheer drop of her former home in Gaza, resting her weight on the juddering railing with every heavy, deliberate step. An Israeli airstrike shattered the building, killing her three young children, Waseem, Mohannad, and Khawla, under the falling debris.
Today, she lives inside a simple canvas tent pitched directly on the remaining concrete platform, surrounded by an endless landscape of shattered concrete, twisted steel, and utter destruction across the Gaza Strip. Her makeshift shelter sits close to active Israeli military positions along the yellow line, where gunfire occasionally breaks out.
Mornings start with the persistent drone of flies trapped inside the canvas and a complete lack of privacy, with neighboring families close enough to hear even a quiet breath or a simple trip to the bathroom. The Guardian reported that cooking gas is completely blocked from entering Gaza, forcing local residents to rely heavily on gathered firewood and open flames for preparing daily meals.
Collecting scrap timber and stoking open fires requires immense physical effort for Alaa before the scorching 34C afternoon heat settles over the encampment, leaving her completely exhausted before the day has truly begun.
A grueling trek for healthcare
A routine prenatal checkup requires a long, grueling trek on foot through destroyed streets littered with concrete dust, rubble, and insects. Proper healthcare centers are practically non-existent in the area, meaning appointments take place inside temporary canvas shelters without adequate medical facilities.
Doctors routinely prescribe basic nutritional supplements, but severe food shortages from the ongoing blockade leave pregnant mothers chronically exhausted and malnourished. Her husband buys small portions of fresh fruit and vegetables when he can afford them, refusing to eat any himself so his wife can get basic nutrients.
Even during routine medical checkups, the emotional weight remains unspoken between patients and staff. Healthcare workers themselves are so deeply exhausted that patients avoid sharing personal tragedies to spare them further pain, knowing almost every family in the camp carries a similar story of profound loss.
Grief shapes every single detail inside the crowded shelter. According to The Guardian, Alaa carefully preserves her deceased children’s surviving clothes in a blue backpack, hauling them through the destruction and hoping her newborn son will eventually wear them. Many garments were torn or scorched at the edges by the bomb blast, but they remain wearable.
Among the worn items is a favorite football scarf for Castleview AFC that her eldest son Waseem insisted on wearing constantly, laughing off his mother’s warm-weather warnings even during the hottest summer afternoons.
Threats inside the shelter
Wild rats pose a relentless threat inside the temporary canvas shelter, writes the newspaper. The rodents continuously chew through the heavy tarpaulin walls, creating open holes every night that force terrified parents to worry about disease and basic physical safety for their upcoming baby. Standard nursery items like baby cribs are practically impossible to locate in Gaza, and available living space inside the tent remains extremely restricted.
Alaa and her brother carefully weighed using rat poison, but ultimately backed away from the idea out of fear the animals would die hidden inside the shelter and spread illness.
As late afternoon turns to evening, quiet moments are spent looking at old videos on a cracked smartphone screen while listening to the thin chiming voices of her children teasing one another. Alaa and her husband lean on each other for strength, regularly visiting their children’s graves together to carry the heavy weight of their collective memory and find solace in shared pain.
Shortly after speaking with reporters, Alaa gave birth to a healthy baby boy, naming him Waseem to honor the memory of his late older brother.
Source: The Guardian
