we are not numbers
emerging writers from Palestine tell their stories and advocate for their human rights
I want to apply for scholarships to continue my education abroad, but will a master’s degree matter if I leave my disabled sister behind?
Riwaa (right) with her sister A’laa (called Lulu), taken in the front room of their home on Eid Al-Fitr, before October 7, 2023. Photo provided by Riwaa Abuquta
This war has forced me to choose between two difficult choices: either to apply for an international scholarship and travel to chase my dream, or to focus only on saving my disabled sister A’laa, whom we call Lulu. I had to decide between them, and I couldn’t do both.
This led to throwing all my personal wishes to the side, rather than leaving my disabled sister behind, which would leave me eating myself up with regret.
Saving Lulu along with my family has become my main priority.
Before the war, I had been working remotely from home with a company abroad. You can imagine how comfortable this was for me.
Our house was the kind of home that is always calm, and each one of us was involved in his or her job, as most of us were working from home. We were doing all the household chores with ease, gathering for meals and at the end of the day and on weekends going outdoors to walk with Lulu as she rode in her own stroller.
The war started while I was applying for overseas scholarships. I had completed most of the paperwork but I hadn’t been able to upload all of it. After October 7. I wasn’t able to submit the applications because the internet was disconnected for more than four months and when it was up, we were following up the news via the radio. So I lost the chance.
Every day, I scrolled through my phone looking at the many advertisements asking me to swipe up to register for scholarships. My friends sent me links to scholarships that suited me, including the programs that I had dreamed of such as interpretation and translation programs or education programs. These represent my passion in language and my belief that communication can save lives and generations, and also make one’s voice heard.
Every day, I checked university websites, searching for the offers they introduce yearly and trying to find a fully funded scholarship.
But then I found myself using the internet for a more prioritized mission. As I believe that communication and language can save lives, I could employ such skills that I have to serve my vulnerable sister, Lulu, with love.
My passion and mission now is to save my sister’s life and make her voice heard.
The C House, a favorite place where Riwaa did her freelance work before the war. Photo: Riwaa Abuquta
My sister is 34 years old, but because of meningitis and other issues that caused spinal and brain infections, she has physical and mental disabilities. Her body never grew as it should and she looks like a young child. She is very small and so fragile. Her mind, too, remains like that of a little child—innocent, vulnerable, and in need of care.
Before this war, Lulu was safe at home, with the family. She found comfort in simple joys—social interaction and being outdoors. But now, with famine, displacement, and the loss of these lifelines, her life is in grave danger and her spirit deeply wounded.
Lulu in her stroller on an outing, before October 7, 2023. Photo: Riwaa Abuquta
She is currently displaced with us in a tent in Al-Mawasi, Khan Younis. Lulu is nonverbal—her loss of speech is a direct result of the trauma she endured from repeated displacement. She is completely dependent on us for all her needs.
Lulu suffers from severe health complications. Since the war began she has lost almost half of her body weight due to famine and now weighs only 24 kg. Every day, I look at her fragile body and wonder if she will survive another night.
Before the war, Lulu was able to walk by herself, and to stand and sit. Since we were forced to leave our home, she has been unable to do so. She refuses to stand on the sandy ground, as the surface feels unstable to her to walk on. She falls when she attempts to stand. This led her to not be able to move. She is either sitting on the chair or lying on her bedding, so this causes more severe complications to her health conditions.
Lulu on May 8, 2024, right after the family was displaced from Rafah to a tent in Al-Mawasi. Riwaa says, “You can see the shock in her face and eyes.” Photo: Riwaa Abuquta
Here in the Gaza Strip, our daily struggles are framed by tiring, exhausting activities; I don’t like calling these a routine because a routine implies choice and activity, doing something actively and willingly, while for us, even basic house chores are battles: finding wood to cook a meal, as there is no gas for cooking, then lighting it and suffering from its smoke. My mother, too, has been unable to get out of bed for almost a month because of severe sinus and eye infections, a direct result of cooking and other smoke.
I have been infected with skin diseases for more than seven months. I had been going from one medical point to another trying to treat the skin allergy I suffer from, but no medicine seems to heal the pain. I have come to realize that my body is responding to the stress and trauma I’ve been enduring because of this war, and its effects appear on my skin, a result of the loss of nutrition and weak immune system that make my skin extremely sensitive to any external factors.
It’s a huge effort to have a shower; can you imagine the conditions of a very basic tent, and what its bathroom looks like? We wash our clothes by hand as there are no washing machines and no electricity.
We are trying to make the environment around us clean and disabled-friendly for Lulu. We try to provide ourselves with clean water, but it is very limited. We depend on groundwater wells, which require electric generators or huge solar panels to operate, and both are scarce and very expensive to provide. When I see my father and brothers carrying water jugs, filling them one by one, and how we depend on carts for transportation on rough dirt roads, with insects all around us, I feel as if we are existing in an ancient era—as if we’ve travelled back in time to the life of humans in much earlier eras. Yet, on the other side of this reality, I find myself trying to charge our mobile phones and laptops. It’s a sharp contrast that coexists side by side.
While I’m cooking in front of the fire or washing my clothes or cleaning and managing in my very basic kitchen and our home, which is nothing more than a tent, I feel trapped in the worst version of myself, one I have never lived before. I feel the heaviness, the harshness, and bitterness of this life.
I have come to realize that we are literally living in the street when we become homeless, because what separates us from the street is only a piece of fabric. We live with constant fear and restlessness. My sisters and I are six girls, and maybe you can imagine the danger and fear that women in a war zone experience, every day.
And while dealing with all of this, women like me still face another kind of struggle. Imagine running for miles across a man-made desert, born from the rubbles of a once living city: Rafah. Trying to reach the distribution aid point operated by the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation that lacks the bare minimum of safety for women and children, surrounded by military tanks, with white sand swirling around, covering your clothes and face in dust. This suffering is only to secure a meal for your babies, whom you left alone in the tent, with mouths open in hunger. What you return with, along the same road with the same dangers, is only a box of canned food, dried beans, and a nutrient mixture of peanut butter and vitamins, which does not secure meals for even two weeks. Many people go through this journey day after day.
It is not safe for any woman to move safely and freely. I’m trying to look for a job, as I became jobless since the war began, but there is no safe place and the internet connection is unstable and going to a café to do my work is also a matter of risk as such places are targeted.
When I look around at my mother and sisters, I constantly experience the thought that we have never suffered such harshness before, and how different this is from how we used to be; before the war, when I was faced with two choices, I chose what brought me ease, not hardship to my soul. I have come to understand that the main goal of this war is not only to starve us but also to break us from within.
I have searched for and communicated with hospitals and humanitarian organizations abroad which deal with specialized cases like Lulu’s, to help us evacuate her to get the proper treatment and medications. Until now I still haven’t heard back from some of them.
We have been trying to travel abroad since my sister’s health condition got worse, but unfortunately, we lost a chance to travel once the Rafah crossing closed. Our names were supposed to be listed on the crossing by the Hala company for travel between of the 9th and 12th of May, 2024, but Israel invaded Rafah on the May 6 and we were forced to leave the city the next day.
We are still displaced. We are still searching for a proper path to travel with Lulu. She needs urgent medical evacuation for medical surgery for the increasing curvature of her spinal cord, with risk to her health increasing rapidly because the curved spine affects the organs in her body, including the heart, lungs, and kidneys.
Her name is now listed in the WHO system for medical evacuation. I have been trying to reach specialized hospitals abroad or humanitarian organizations whose mission is to evacuate cases like my sister Lulu’s. I did reach a hospital abroad and they approved her case, but financial coverage is an obstacle, so we have been trying to see if humanitarian organizations can help.
This war turned me from a scholarship applicant into a sister fighting to protect her loved ones.
I’m between two fires–either to chase my own dream and future, or leave my Lulu behind suffering a war that she has never understood.
