WARNING: This story contains discussion of suicidal thoughts
Every morning for months, eight-year-old Samah Tabir has woken up in her tent camp in the southern Gaza Strip, picked up a shard of a broken mirror and gazed upon her hair, praying for a miracle that it would grow back.
Sama, who lives in a tent camp for displaced Palestinians in the western town of Khan Yunis, wears a pink bandana to hide her nearly bald head after suddenly losing most of her hair in June.
“I wish I could put a hair tie in my hair again, I wish I could hold a brush and comb my hair again,” she said.
“I miss brushing my hair so much.”
Her family – brothers, sisters and parents – are among tens of thousands of displaced people in the region. They were in the southern Gaza city of Rafah when Israeli forces moved in and overran the checkpoint to Egypt on May 6.
Sama said her children were asleep when Israeli soldiers burst into their home.
Sama’s mother, Fatta, holds her daughter’s head in an attempt to comfort her. (Mohamed El Saif/CBC)
His mother, Fata Tabir, said the family fled to a nearby hospital but about 30 minutes after they arrived, the second floor of the building was hit by Israeli airstrikes.
“My daughter was very scared and panicked. The shrapnel and the attack was very powerful,” Fattah said.
Doctors said Sama’s hair loss was likely caused by nervous shock due to extreme fear, according to Fattah, who said his daughter remains frightened by the uncertainty and unsafety of being on the battlefield, with constant ambulance sirens and artillery fire nearby.
“How is her hair going to grow back in this situation?”
Experts say this is just one of many symptoms of the psychological distress and trauma being experienced by hundreds of thousands of children in Gaza as a result of Israel’s ongoing bombardment of the besieged Strip.
Watch | Stress causes hair loss:
8-year-old girl in Gaza loses most of her hair
Sama Tabir, an eight-year-old girl, sits in a tent camp west of Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip, braiding the fur of a toy. She has lost most of her hair and can no longer braid it herself. Doctors have told Tabir that it’s because she is living in constant fear as Israeli airstrikes continue to target the Gaza Strip. She says she hopes that one day her hair will grow back and she will be able to comb it again.
Dr. Abdul Basis, a Toronto-area emergency physician, says hair loss is one of the many ways the stress and trauma of war manifests physically.
“Children in Gaza have experienced unprecedented levels of trauma,” Bassis said.
Bassis, who spent two weeks in Gaza in March as part of a World Health Organisation (WHO) emergency medical team, said the situation in Gaza was having an “incredibly serious” impact on children’s mental health.
Sama’s family waited until morning to leave the hospital and flee to Khan Younis. Over the next two days, whenever Sama brushed her hair, it would fall out in clumps all at once.
“Most of her hair fell out,” Futter said.
Sama said her hair loss meant she could no longer play with her friends and they began teasing her.
“Once, Sama came to me screaming. The kids ripped off her bandana and called her ‘bald,'” Fattah said, adding that Sama now plays with toys and colours on paper.
Girls mourn a Palestinian killed in an Israeli attack at a hospital in Khan Younisson, Nov. 3, 2023. (Mohamed Salem/Reuters)
She said she and her husband had done all they could, taking Sama to several doctors, but to no avail: the treatments needed to regrow her hair were not available, and the alternative treatments they tried were ineffective.
“Yesterday around 10pm she was screaming. I asked her what was wrong and she said ‘I want to die’,” Fattah said.
“I asked her, ‘Why?’ and she said, ‘Because it’s my birthday and I don’t have any hair.'”
“My childhood was stolen from me.”
Sama turns nine on October 5 – almost a year into the war between Israel and Hamas – and says she just wants her hair to grow back so she can brush and braid it like before.
The hair loss is a reflection of the sadness and hardship Sama has already endured at a young age, despite having lived in blockaded Gaza her whole life and for nearly a year in a war zone.
“They have taken my childhood from me,” she said in Arabic. “This hair loss has taken so much from me. I just want my hair to grow back.”
Smoke rises after an airstrike as Israeli forces launch ground and air operations in eastern Rafah on May 7. (Hatem Khaled/Reuters)
“Nearly 17 years of blockade, plus months of violence, displacement, hunger and disease, have taken an inexorable psychological toll on Gaza’s children,” according to a report released in March by Save the Children.
“The support, services and tools they need to care for their children are increasingly out of reach,” the nonprofit said at the time.
All those consulted said they had witnessed a “dramatic deterioration” in children’s mental health, the report said, adding that the situation in Gaza now represents “textbook risk factors” for lasting psychological harm.
Symptoms included “fear, anxiety, eating disorders, bedwetting” and sleep disorders.
According to the latest figures released by the Gaza Health Ministry, Israeli attacks have killed more than 41,467 Palestinians, wounded some 95,921 and forced the displacement of almost all of the 2.3 million residents since the war began last fall.The conflict follows a Hamas uprising in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, in which Hamas fighters killed 1,200 people and took more than 250 hostages, according to Israel’s tally.
Sama said she hopes one day to burn her pink bandana so she can bare her head like she used to. (Mohamed El Saif/CBC)
Stress and fear
Dr. Fozia Alvi, a family physician in Calgary, is also president of Humanity Auxilium, a Canada-based network of volunteer physicians.
Since February, she said, the nonprofit has sent 36 doctors to Gaza to provide humanitarian aid, and “almost every one of them told me more or less the same story about the stress on children and the fear they’re facing.”
Alvi said children undergoing surgery often do so without adequate anesthesia, “while battling the psychological trauma of war.”
That trauma can have far-reaching effects.
“Not knowing if they’re going to live or die certainly makes kids more susceptible to illness in the short term, but also chronic diseases in the long term,” said Bassis, the emergency physician.
“If you take a step back, the real horror is that if they survive this genocide and become adults, they are destined to have to deal with the demons of trauma for the rest of their lives.”
Sama said she hopes one day she’ll be able to give up the pink bandana altogether.
“God willing, when my hair grows back I will burn this bandana,” she said.
“It’s going to burn. I hate it. I wish my hair would grow back so I could braid it.”
