Gaza’s Orphans

In the early days of the war, I came across a photo of an orphanage in Gaza City, mainly for children with disabilities. Searching for more information online, I found a GoFundMe page from a few years ago: a British man was running a marathon in support of the Mubarat al-Rahma orphanage, which seemed to be the same place. I sent a message via GoFundMe and heard back a couple of weeks later – the man and his wife have been supporting the orphanage for years, and still are. They introduced me to Hazem al-Naizi, who manages it, looking after twenty children. Hazem and his wife also have five children of their own.

In November they were forced to leave the orphanage building. A mosque next to them was hit by an airstrike and their windows had been shattered. A ground incursion was impending – no place for children. But where was? Hazem video-called me one Sunday morning. It was the only time we were able to talk face to face. He smiled and asked about where I was from before flipping the camera to show me the scenes of bombardment outside. By then, he and the children were living in the Jabaliya refugee camp. When it was safe, he’d return to the orphanage building to access its still-intact wifi.

I have lost track of how many times Hazem and the children have been displaced since that first move to Jabaliya. It was hard enough moving from one part of Gaza City to another. There are eight babies in the orphanage, as well as children who are severely disabled and need help to move, eat and drink. Without electricity, Ayas, an eight-year-old boy with cerebral palsy who could not eat solid food, had to rely on an unsteady diet of grated cheese.

They walked south to Khan Younis. Hazem carried Ayas in his arms with his youngest son, Yaman, aged seven, walking beside him. ‘The soldiers enjoyed the humiliation,’ he wrote. The thousands desperate to flee were allowed to pass through a gate to the south twenty people at a time. They moved forward at three steps an hour. Hazem could barely breathe among the crowds. Ayas ‘suffered so much that the whites of his eyes became almost blue’.

They were fortunate to get through: Hazem saw others detained, forced to kneel or not permitted to cross at all. His wife and other children were also trying to cross that day, but he was not allowed to wait for them. He was told by soldiers to move immediately, ‘otherwise they would shoot us.’ Instead, he stood on a road a short distance away with others who were hoping to see their families pass through. After a while the soldiers opened fire on them. ‘I quickly moved away and then I waited a little, until I became desperate when darkness fell.’

His wife and children were told to come back the next day. Unable to face the danger of repeating the journey, they stayed in the north, and he has been separated from them for eight months. In March, they were reduced to eating animal feed.

He sent me photos of them before the war: Tallen, aged ten, following a YouTube tutorial on how to draw Kylian Mbappé. Abdullah, fourteen, posing in a sharp suit and sunglasses: he is ‘looking to be a businessman’. Said, his eldest son, hopes to be a computer engineer like his mother. His eldest daughter, Layan, wants to be a teacher.

Ayas died in February, in an ambulance on the way to hospital in Rafah. Even if they had made it in time, Hazem doubts he would have survived. Deprived of medication, his condition had been worsening for weeks. He had been displaced at least six times. ‘Ayas is just a child among thousands of children who suffer here in Gaza and whose lives are exposed to danger every day,’ Hazem wrote to me. The day Ayas was buried, Hazem got news that his medicine could cross the border.

Last month, I heard that the orphanage has grown with the addition of two babies, a girl and a boy, who were found with no surviving family members. Malak and Yazan are both only a few weeks old. More recently a month-old baby girl with Down’s syndrome joined them. Her name is Yafa. ‘We hope to do our duty by caring for them, providing them with a decent life and a sound upbringing, and compensating them for the family they lost,’ Hazem wrote.

The medical situation is precarious again, as the children’s medicine is stuck on the other side of the border with Egypt. Their current six-month supply, brought in shortly after Ayas died, is running out.

‘The dreams of these children, which I told you about, began to evaporate as a result of the war,’ Hazem wrote, ‘as their only goal became how to obtain water and food and move to a safe place. Every day you search for water and have to walk long distances and stand in line to get water. Our life has become very trivial. We live like animals, searching for food, water and a safe place. This is a very difficult life.’