A complicated journey to recovery

people crowd around a charity food distribution center for rice — A poor diet, overcrowding, the lack of shelter, clean water and medicine all combine with the stress of war to leave Palestinians in Gaza more vulnerable to disease.
Omar Ashtawy The Electronic Intifada

Despite the fact that I have survived so far, this genocidal war is killing my body and mind slowly.

It’s leaving me soulless, a mind full of fear but without hope or dreams or a future.

I have been separated from my husband Ahmad for five months. He decided to stay in the north, because he feared that Israel’s plan was to repeat the 1948 Nakba – when two-thirds of the Palestinian people were forced to flee never to be allowed home – empty Gaza and not let anyone return.

He is staying in his family’s home. The Israeli military burned and destroyed our home and memories. I’ve been forcibly displaced nine times. My father and brother were kidnapped by Israeli soldiers.

I live a daily nightmare of blood, murder and bombardment. I am raising my child alone in a tent on private land in al-Mawasi area of Khan Younis.

All this pressure is weakening my immunity.

In July, I was planning to visit a relative displaced to Deir al-Balah I hadn’t seen for nine months. I went with my mother, my 20-month-old son Majd and Aboud, my brother, who knows the area better than we do.

It was noon. The weather was very hot and the streets were crowded. I spent 40 minutes waiting for any kind of transport and all I found was a donkey. It would be crazy to ride it all the way on such a hot day.

I suddenly felt extremely fatigued. I couldn’t hold myself up. My vision blurred, and there seemed to be lights everywhere.

I felt I was about to lose my balance, so I gave Majd to Aboud and held onto my mother. We returned back to our shelter. At first, I thought it was sunstroke or low blood pressure. However, I had a severe fever the next day and I spent all day sleeping. I couldn’t breathe well at night, and I felt the tent was closing in on me, suffocating me. I also had no appetite.

First diagnosis

I went to a doctor who said I had COVID-19. He asked me to take four kinds of medicines. I was not convinced. I didn’t have any flu symptoms. All I had was shortness of breath, exhaustion and dizziness.

Still, I completed the course of drugs. But after 14 days, where I mostly slept, I didn’t feel completely recovered. Over the next 10 days my eyes and face turned yellow.

It was hepatitis.

I went to a nearby medical station and noticed that most of the patients also had yellow eyes and faces. It felt like a strange movie. The doctor there, however, told us that we did not need medicine, only sweets and patience.

“You will gradually get better,” the doctor told us.

Under normal circumstances, perhaps. But August and September were difficult months for me.

I learned from an ex-detainee that my brother Izzedine, or Izz, as we know him, 17, was suffering an excruciating toothache and needed a tooth extracted but they hardly gave him painkillers.

I learned that my father Alyan had started to need medicine regularly and was moved to a tent for detainees with chronic diseases in Al-Naqab prison. My father had had no such chronic condition before Israel kidnapped him in the first days of February.

My father’s 61st birthday fell on 20 August. I knew nothing about his situation. I had not spoken to him since February.

I worry about my brother and father constantly. I believe this is one reason my health is deteriorating.

On 23 August, I woke up in a panic feeling my throat was blocked with phlegm. I couldn’t swallow or vomit it away and I could barely breathe.

My mother and Aboud and two of my sisters woke up but didn’t know what to do. I put my hand on my throat and was trying my best to breathe, but only a strange sound came out. I heard them saying, “Give her water!,” and letting in some fresh air.

I couldn’t tell them that while I needed water, I couldn’t drink. I just turned it away.

Slowly I managed to swallow the phlegm and return to normal. I sat for about half an hour, frightened. Later that morning, I went to the emergency section in Al-Kuwaiti hospital. I got a vaporizer to help me breathe and a drug for expelling phlegm.

Suspicious phone call

On 1 September, a woman claiming to work for the Red Cross phoned us and started to ask very detailed questions about my detained brother Izz.

This happened after we knew that an unknown woman claiming that she was a human rights activist had talked with him in detention and had asked him to write us a letter. Soldiers then came at dawn and took him from his cell to an unknown place.

My family asked the lawyers and they all agreed that this is an investigator working with the Israeli military and is possibly the same one who phoned us.

I spent all day thinking of what had happened to my brother, a minor.

I spent all day thinking about what might happen to him.

That night, I suffocated again, this time for more than seven minutes. I sweated heavily and felt my chest and stomach contracting in movements that were out of my control.

I started to feel too tired to breathe or even try to swallow the phlegm that was blocking my airway. My body started to relax. At this point, Aboud patted me firmly on my back, loosening the phlegm, which went down gradually. I felt better so signaled to him to continue.

But while my breathing returned to normal, the involuntary contractions in my stomach continued for nearly 20 minutes until I finally threw up.

As I slowly returned to normal, I looked around. My entire family was looking at me in horror, including my poor little Majd, who seemed frozen in place.

I hugged him and cried.

My thoughts crowded in. A thousand questions.

I am scaring the child. I’m afraid of sleeping. What if I suffocate and can’t get my breath back? What if I die? What will happen to Majd, who is separated from his father? Who will take care of him?

More questions: My dreams? Will I ever pray at al-Aqsa? Will I ever make the pilgrimage to Mecca? Will I ever be able to travel abroad with my family?

Is this all the time I’ve got?

I had a headache. My mom made me a hot drink. She didn’t sleep until I slept, at dawn.

Self-diagnosis

I decided, after another night of less severe trouble, to seek medical advice.

But Gaza’s healthcare sector is in ruins.

First, I went to a UK clinic, which opened in the past year. It was filled with new and inexperienced staff. The older ones are either in their graves or have been forced abroad.

I explained my situation to an overworked doctor who barely had a moment to listen and who quickly scribbled a prescription for two medicines. Neither were available in the pharmacy.

I went to see a specialist doctor at Nasser Hospital. It was busy. I stood in a queue with a woman who had had an eye stroke and was in urgent need of attention, and another who had shrapnel in her leg and was crying for surgery.

After 15 minutes of waiting, I was told that I would have to wait weeks for an appointment. I couldn’t wait weeks. I felt I would suffocate any night. So, I went to the Jordanian field hospital and its Jordanian medical staff, where diagnosis and medicines are offered free.

It was more crowded than at Nasser. Another overburdened doctor wrote me a different prescription, this time for four types of drugs. I only found two of them in the hospital pharmacy, and, despite a long search, could not find the two most important ones, either there, or in surrounding pharmacies.

I walked around the destroyed and polluted streets of Khan Younis feeling frustrated, tired and confused. I began thinking about the food I have been eating over the months of genocide, spurred by one drug the Jordanian doctor prescribed that is for the stomach.

I started to connect what happens to me with the food I eat. I researched again my symptoms and, with a system of trial and error, I paid close attention to my body after each meal and the effects of each type of food.

I concluded that I might have a sulfite allergy. I was eating a lot of dates from the trees on the land where we had set up our tent. I’ve also had to rely on a lot of canned food.

So, I decided to stop eating canned hummus and beans at breakfast. I resolved to eat more fresh vegetables and fruits and soups when these were available. I reduced eating products with a lot of preservatives, and I found an allergy medicine.

Combined, this made me feel a lot better.

I wish we had doctors here to guide us to such healthy choices. I hope one day we will.

But I understand now more than ever how our health, mental and physical, my reunion with my husband, the fate of my father and my brother and the freedom of our land are all intertwined.

Hanin A. Elholy is a researcher, writer and translator based in Gaza.