We placed a stone as a marker for Mustafa’s grave. The cardboard sign reads, ‘The Martyr, God willing, Mustafa Atef Mushtaha.’ Photo: Sadeq Nawaf Abdalhafez

Mustafa wasn’t the most talkative among us, but he had the greatest presence. 

After 21 months of war on Gaza, our hearts had already grown numb to the pain of loss, starvation, waiting, and the death that rains down suddenly from the sky. On June 10, 2025, I was rushing to work, the summer heat heavy on my chest. It was 8:15 a.m., and I was only a few steps away from my office. I work at a humanitarian organization caring for orphans — children who lost one or both parents in this war or in the many wars that preceded it.

Seconds before I arrived, my phone rang. It was my friend Tamer.

“Brother, how are you?”

“Tamer, my friend, thank God.  Tell me, are you OK?”

A brief silence followed, then his voice broke. “The house next to us was bombed. Our home is completely destroyed and both of my sisters are martyred.”

Something inside me stopped completely. I had offered condolences dozens of times during this war, yet I found myself entirely speechless. All I could manage to say was “I’m on my way.”

I quickened my pace, almost running. I walked into the office and dropped my bag — my laptop, my papers. Everything suddenly felt meaningless. I shed every weight holding me back. My coworker, Mohamed, was already there. I told him quickly, and we immediately started calling our friends and neighbors. We called Anas, who was at his pharmacy; he locked up the shop and rushed to join us. As for Mustafa, he ran all the way from his house and joined us.

We all met at Al-Ahli Al-Ma’amadani Hospital. The hospital was no longer a place for healing; it was a storm of grief. Screams echoed through the corridors, and wails rose and fell like waves. The ground was covered in white shrouds — bodies lined up side by side. Families clung to them, weeping, whispering, and collapsing. No sound rose above the sound of loss.

We found Tamer sitting in a corner, as if the world had faded away around him. Next to him lay two small bodies, Jana and Aya. Jana, barely 15, carried the tenderness of a mother in her quiet nature; she looked after her paralyzed aunt at home, bearing burdens far beyond her age. Seventeen-year-old Aya was quieter, a dreamer. She held onto her schoolbooks as if holding onto her entire future, preparing for her high school exams, still believing there was a tomorrow.

We greeted him, though words are far too small for such a moment. We performed the funeral prayer, then carried them to the car. There wasn’t enough room for everyone. Mustafa took a step back and said simply, “I’ll walk. I’ll meet you at the cemetery.” Even in that moment, he put others before himself.

We headed for the cemetery on the western side of Salah Al-Din Street, just dozens of meters from the buffer zone. It was our only remaining option after the others had completely filled up or lay east of the Yellow Line. We placed the two sisters in a single grave; there was no space for two.

Above us, Israeli surveillance drones circled endlessly, and a quadcopter hovered nearby, watching and waiting. Just as we began covering the grave with sand, the cracks of gunfire deafeningly close stripped away our ability to think. We threw ourselves to the ground in an attempt to shield ourselves. Bullets struck the earth around us, hitting neighboring graves and kicking up dust. Survival became pure, raw instinct.

An elderly man appeared amidst the chaos and shouted for everyone to leave immediately. Everyone started running, but we — Mohamed, Anas, Mustafa, Tamer, and I — stayed back. We finished the burial under the sound of bullets and distant shelling. My hands were shaking, but I kept working. I had never known fear like this before — not the kind that paralyzes you, but the kind that forces you to keep moving.

When we finished, we began to run.

I was slightly ahead of Mustafa. Suddenly, I sensed he was no longer behind me; the sound of his movement vanished. I turned around and found him by a tree.

I screamed, “Mustafa! Move! It’s safer outside the cemetery!” He didn’t answer. I ran back to him, and his uncle was by his side. He was an elderly tailor in his 60s, a colleague of Tamer’s father who had come to the cemetery to offer his condolences and support the family.

I asked, “What happened?” He said in a faint voice, “He’s been hit in his back.” I placed my hand there; his body was trembling. A bullet.

His uncle leaned over him and said, “Say: La ilaha illa Allah.” And Mustafa said it back: “La ilaha illa Allah. I bear witness that there is no god but Allah.” He walked a few steps, then his strength completely failed, and he stopped moving.

In that moment, everything slowed down. I saw him with unbearable clarity, as if time had chosen him alone to freeze. Then Mohamed’s voice broke through: “Get out! Fast!”

We ran, but I went back to Mustafa again as he lay on the ground. I looked into his eyes, and I knew he was gone. Still, I ran to look for a vehicle. By chance, an ambulance passed by. I begged the driver, and despite the danger, he came with us. We carried him inside.

His uncle kept calling out to him: “Mustafa…wake up…do it for your mother…wake up.” His mother was a woman who had lost her husband, Abu Mohamed, before the war, and her eldest son, Mohamed, at its very beginning.

We arrived at Al-Ahli Al-Ma’amadani Hospital, the same place we had left less than an hour earlier. We placed him on a worn-out stretcher inside a tent that had been labeled Emergency Department. Two doctors arrived, one a young man about my age. He examined him, then his hands stopped. He closed his eyes for a moment, then raised his head. He didn’t utter a word. We understood.

Everyone stepped back. I already knew; in the ambulance, I had placed my fingers on his neck and there was no pulse, but something inside me refused to believe until that silent nod from the doctor. When we arrived, it was the doctor’s gaze that printed itself into my memory, a heavy gaze that has remained with me to this day.

My friend, Mustafa Mushtaha. The photo was taken in the Al-Shuja’iyya neighborhood, before it was completely destroyed. Photo: Sadeq Nawaf Abdalhafez

But what stayed with me wasn’t just his death; it was the distance that separated us at that exact moment, a distance of no more than a single step, just a few centimeters. It could have been me. The bullet that pierced his back could have veered just a few centimeters and entered mine instead. If I had run where he stood, if he had hesitated for a second and I had moved forward — you wouldn’t be reading my words right now. Those few centimeters separating me from him are all that made the difference between life and death; he could be the one telling this story, not me.

I return to that moment over and over again. I rearrange it in my mind — who moved first, who slowed their pace, who turned. I change the angles, the timing, and the distances. Every time, I look for an explanation, for a reason to make sense of what happened. But there is nothing. It is just fate. And here I am, living a life that sometimes feels like it wasn’t meant for me. I carry him with me — not just his memory, but the fact that I survived while he didn’t. I am still swallowing and living inside this bitterness.

Mustafa Mushtaha was ordinary — exceptionally ordinary. There was nothing remarkable about him, nothing he did to be remembered. But he was good. He carried his family as if it were the most natural thing, even though he was the youngest. He bought the groceries, helped his mother, and slept beside his sick aunt in the hospital despite the pain he suffered in his back and knee that he never spoke of. He didn’t live for himself; he lived for others through his presence, his generosity, and his laughter.

He filled our days with his voice and our long fits of giggles. He was remarkably skilled at cooking and grilling meat — a passion he refused to let the war extinguish. In the middle of the conflict, he decided to open his own small restaurant specializing in grilled meats. While missiles flattened entire blocks and aimed to strip away our futures, Mustafa chose to build. He proved that his will to create and live was stronger than any bomb dropped from the sky.

Mustafa left behind an unbelievable absence. Every time I try to grasp the idea that he won’t return, I feel a burning pain, like trying to stare directly into the sun. He is gone, and to this day, I still live in the shadow of those few centimeters that separated us.

This article is co-published with Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.