Sana al-Tabil paints inside a tent where her family is seeking shelter in al-Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza.
Photo provided by family.
Hussein and Olfat al-Tabil and their four children — Rose, 9 years old; Sama, 8 years old. Mohammed, 5 years old. and Saif, 3, have already been evacuated five times since October last year.
They struggle to keep their children safe and feed their children during Israel’s massacre in Gaza.
Hussein, 33, originally from Jabaliya camp in northern Gaza, told Electronic Intifada that his family was first evacuated to al-Brey camp in central Gaza.
They were then driven further south to Khan Yunis and then to Rafah.
“After the ground invasion of Rafah, we were forced to return to Khan Yunis and have since been forced to evacuate within Khan Yunis several times.”
Hussein, a law graduate, was working in construction until October last year due to limited opportunities, but like others in Gaza, his family was forced to endure relentless bombing and deprivation of basic necessities, food, water and shelter. , said they are suffering from an almost complete lack of electricity and internet. .
However, to add to these challenges, her youngest daughter, Sama, started losing her hair. There is no clear reason, and her family believes her hair loss is due to the psychological stress she is experiencing as she moves frequently to survive.
“I never imagined that the horrors my children and all children in Gaza endure would lead to my daughter Sama losing her hair,” Hussein said.
His daughter is an honor student who loves drawing, coloring, and making handmade accessories from beads.
“She is very careful in choosing her clothes and hair accessories…Every day before the war, she carefully selected her hairstyle for the day,” Hussein said.
night of trauma
No one knows for sure, but Sama’s hair loss began after a particularly rough night in Rafah, when he woke up to “the sound of shells and crazy quadcopter gunfire.” There is.
“I immediately gathered the children and their mothers and rushed them to the Indonesian hospital,” Hussein said of the hospital’s branch opened in Rafah.
“Sama kept asking, ‘What’s wrong, dad?’ Dad, what’s going on?”
“I tried to reassure her, but how could I do that when the deafening sound of shelling overwhelmed me? She started screaming, ‘I don’t want to die,'” Hussein recalled.
But the traumatic night took a turn for the worse when Israeli forces bombed the upper floors of an Indonesian field hospital, and he and his family “fleeed in desperation to Khan Yunis.”
The father said Sama’s hair started falling out “at an alarming rate” after three days, and that her mental state was “quickly deteriorating with fear and hair loss” and that he felt he could not do much to help her. pointed out.
“I took her to several doctors, but no one could diagnose her condition. She was prescribed several medications, but they didn’t work. In fact, they were unable to diagnose her condition. It seemed like it was making things worse,” Hussain said.
He began giving Sama random vitamins and supplements, but a doctor told him that she needed psychological treatment because she had no organic disease to explain her hair loss. spoke.
Her treatment may need to focus on her mental health, but how in the middle of a genocide? Hussein wondered.
“My daughter wakes up every day to the sounds of bombings, the voices of refugees, the cries of the wounded, screams and fear. I don’t know how to improve her psychological state under these conditions,” Hussein said. said.
Sama said, “I want my hair to be the same as before.”
“Kids walking by asked me, ‘Do you have cancer?’ So I went back to the tent and cried to my mother. She tried to reassure me that I didn’t have cancer,” she said. told Electronic Intifada.
For her, living in a tent is “horrifying and incredibly difficult.”
“I just want to go home. Or leave Gaza. I want to get treatment,” Sama said.
Aseel Moussa is a journalist based in Gaza.
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