Ghada volunteers at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital. Photo: Eman Ghassan Abu Zayed

Ghada Faiz Hassouna’s score on the Tawjihi (General Secondary Education Certificate Examination) was the second highest in Palestine. She continued to progress, becoming a passionate medical student dedicated to scientific research. By her third year at medical school, Ghada was passing her exams with honors.

One Friday, after attending a friend’s wedding, she proudly ironed her lab coat to wear the next day—the start of her first week of work at the hospital. After three years of study, she had reached this milestone.

The very next day, war broke out.

Ghada, like the rest of the residents of the Gaza Strip, suddenly had to go without water or electricity. She had enjoyed a desk, a laptop, and an iPad for her studies; now she had to fetch and carry water for her family.

Evacuation

Three months into the war, Ghada and her family were ordered to evacuate. They each could take only what could fit in a single bag: a few treasured possessions, money, food, water, clothing, and small electronic devices. They fled on foot and walked for miles. Their home—the entire building—was demolished and with it all of Ghada’s study materials, including her tablet with three years’ worth of notes.

Ghada and her family were displaced in Rafah in January 2024. Photo: Eman Ghassan Abu Zayed

Ghada’s new home was a tent in the desert. Without even plants or foliage around them, she and her family were now living in primitive conditions in an isolated part of Gaza.

Ghada’s beloved uncle had been unwell and due to receive treatment. The war made this impossible. Without the medical treatment he needed, he passed away. Another uncle, suffering from liver cancer but whose health Ghada hoped might improve even slightly, was killed in an airstrike along with his entire family.

These were difficult, scarcely bearable moments for Ghada. As a medical student, she had dreamed infinite dreams. All she could do now was to offer assistance to others in nearby tents.

Despite the harsh circumstances of the war, she decided to volunteer at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital. By offering help to the injured and wounded, she could at least put her medical knowledge to good use.

When a street near the hospital was bombed—the street where Ghada had just bought falafel—her family worried about her. It was a powerful strike and they were sure it would have reached the hospital. Communications were poor and overcrowding meant that movement between the hospital departments was slow and restricted. Ghada had left her phone was in the nurses’ quarters, and it was hours before she could contact her family. They cried bitterly as they searched for her.

The emergency room

After the bombing, the emergency room filled with injured people.

Imagine the scene: one person was bleeding heavily on the hospital floor; another was vomiting; a mother was screaming; a man was attacking the security officer; a child was crying.

Someone was breathing their last while another with a disfigured face didn’t know what had happened to their family. One person had half a brain, another had severed limbs. A nurse was shouting, “That’s my father!” There was cardiac resuscitation; there was a child attached to an oxygen cylinder being transferred to another hospital.

Everyone was running. The noise was deafening.

Ghada, the 22-year-old medical student, stood in the middle of this tragic chaos, wondering how she would ever overcome such sights.

After a heavy bombing targeted a nearby neighborhood, the injured kept coming. Among the wounded was a young girl who had lost her parents and been living with her grandparents. She arrived covered in blood. As Ghada started stitching up her wounds, she realized that the girl was in total shock. She didn’t say a word, nor did she show any reaction while her wounds were being stitched. It was as though the emotional pain inside her had overshadowed the physical pain.

Ghada asked the girl’s relatives not to tell her about the fate of her grandparents, hoping she would first recover physically before having to face the devastating truth that they too had been killed. But, unaware of this request, a family friend approached the girl saying, “May God have mercy on them.” In Arabic this means that they had passed away. Abruptly the girl was shaken out of her shocked state and started screaming with profound grief. “Who do I have left in this life?” she cried repeatedly.

It was a heart-wrenching scene, encapsulating the magnitude of loss, pain, and loneliness felt by a survivor who has lost everything and everyone they care about.

Further study

Every day in the doctors’ dormitory, Ghada listened to more stories of suffering and comforted colleagues who had lost family members. Her medical mask and professionalism made it possible for her to continue her work as if nothing had happened. Like a mountain, she stood firm and continued to smile, giving her best.

Aside from tending the patients, Ghada had to sit a surgical exam for Palestinian medical students. But because of the blockade and closure of the crossings, Gazan students were unable to get hold of the materials they needed for their training, including kits for suturing. Ghada looked for alternatives. She practiced suturing using a lemon, attempting to simulate skin texture with the simplest materials available. She didn’t allow these obstacles to extinguish her passion. Instead, her motivation to continue was even greater.

She felt that her dream was not tied to a place or time, and most importantly, that it was sustained by God. If something was meant to be, it would be.

Ghada completed her fourth year at medical school, despite the conditions of war, the patchy internet, and the difficulty of commuting to the hospital. She and her classmates faced the harshest conditions a student could endure. They were taking their exams electronically, amidst continuous power cuts, weak internet connections, and bitterly cold weather. Each exam had a strict time limit, with no tolerance for error because in the field of medicine, as they learned, even the smallest mistake can cost a life.

One day, during torrential rain and in freezing temperatures, Ghada started an exam. She tried to concentrate despite the sound of the wind and the dim light from a small lamp that barely illuminated the screen. She answered the first 20 questions when the internet suddenly cut out. It was a shocking moment; she felt as if all the effort she had put in had evaporated.

She searched for a signal, for hope, for any way to get back into the exam before time ran out. It was one of the worst moments she had experienced and yet it taught her how to resist, how to hold firm in the storm, and how to continue on the path, no matter how desolate it seemed.

Ghada and her colleagues are training on the front line, witnessing and handling the casualties of war. She hears from all the medical delegations that come to Gaza that they are truly the best, brightest, and most skilled medical students they’ve known.

Ghada graduated with honors, and now, in her fifth year, she continues to pursue her dream.