we are not numbers

emerging writers from Palestine tell their stories and advocate for their human rights

The aftermath of massacres

The world has become accustomed to the mass killings in Gaza. But if you work in a hospital, each one is a nightmare.
Faress Arafat.
A crowd of people in the Al-Shifa Hospital emergency room.
Emergency department reception area with victims arriving from the Al-Shifa Hospital massacre, November 3, 2023. Photo provided by Faress Arafat

 

On Friday, November 3, 2023, around 4 p.m., the emergency department at Al-Shifa Hospital was almost quiet. I had been working there as a volunteer nurse since the beginning of the war.

I needed to take a short break to get news from my mother who was sheltering in the southern Gaza Strip with the rest of my family. I took my phone and went out the department door on my way to the main street because the signal there was better. But as soon as I took my first steps outside, Israeli Defense Forces planes bombed the main street just in front of the hospital.

I fell to the ground, and my vision became blurry. I didn’t know what was happening. I thought I had died or that part of my body had been cut off.

I quickly checked myself and then ran inside to prepare for the incoming injuries. I expected that we would receive a huge number of injured persons and martyrs because the street in front of the hospital had been full of displaced people who considered the hospital a safe place.

Hallway at Al-Shifa Hospital.
Inside the intensive care unit in the emergency department with victims who have arrived from the Al-Shifa Hospital massacre, November 3, 2023. Photo provided by Faress Arafat

Dozens of injured people started arriving in the intensive care unit. People would come and drop the injured on the floor and go back out to bring more. Most of the injuries required intensive care because they were so severe. The number of wounded people was very high; the medical staff and the workspace were insufficient to handle them.

We sorted the cases — who was alive and who was dead. We put the martyrs in large white bags. I trembled as I did that. As for the injured, we dealt with them quickly and reassessed them to determine whether they needed urgent surgery or could be treated directly in the emergency department.

Most of the martyred or injured were children and women. I wondered why places that were supposed to be safe and protected according to international law were being bombed; this was the first time I saw with my own eyes that protected areas could become a target for bombing.

What a massacre looks like

Over the weeks while I was a volunteer nurse in the emergency department in Al-Shifa Hospital, from the first day of the war to the storming of the hospital and our displacement to the south, I witnessed the aftermath of dozens of massacres. After every massacre, I dealt with dozens of martyrs and dozens of injured people.

You may wonder what a massacre looks like, or you may not want to know. Most of the injured people I handled had no features left due to the severe burns caused by the missiles’ flames. In many cases, the injured arrived with missing limbs, such as a hand or foot, or with their intestines exposed. As for the martyrs, they arrived in the form of small pieces that we could not differentiate, and some body parts could not be found — perhaps they had completely melted.

After arrival at the hospital and the initial triage, some patients go to operating rooms. For those whose injuries necessitate more than just emergency care, operating rooms are the next destination, where the fate of the injured person is decided — whether they will come out alive or dead. When there is a massacre, the pressure on operating rooms increases tremendously due to the number and severity of the injuries.

My friend Ashraf, who had been volunteering since the first day of the war as an anesthesia and resuscitation technician at Al-Shifa Hospital, told me about the most difficult day he had ever had at work, the day of the massacre at Ahli Arab Hospital on October 17. Ashraf was taking a break at home after a tiring day in the operating rooms.

Suddenly, all medical personnel received an emergency signal to be on maximum alert and to prepare all the operating rooms. Ashraf rushed without thinking in an ambulance to Ahli Arab. He saw fire burning everywhere and heard children screaming as they burned. Firefighters and paramedics were trying to save the remaining people.

Man attending patient inside an ambulance.
Ashraf tending to a victim in an ambulance after the massacre at the Ahli Arab Hospital on October 17, 2023. Photo provided by Faress Arafat

Ashraf started moving the injured who appeared to be alive to safety, then returned to Al-Shifa Hospital to work in the operating rooms, which had become a war zone. The number of injuries was enormous. He told me they performed operations everywhere — even on the floor and on beds. There wasn’t enough room for all the injured. After one operation ended, the operated patient was placed on the floor, and the next one was brought in.

As he recalled standing among hundreds of injured people, some dead and some alive, Ashraf said he still could not find words to express his feelings. He had lived this situation from the perspective of the injured patients and their families.

He struggled to cope then, and still struggles now.  Even talking about it weeks later, Ashraf burst into tears and asked me, “Why are we being killed? Are we just numbers?”

I did not find a suitable answer to Ashraf’s question, and I haven’t found one since then. Perhaps we are just numbers in massacre tallies. After the Al-Shifa Hospital massacre, the Israeli army did not stop committing massacres; in fact, it has committed more and still more. It has bombed schools that sheltered the displaced and destroyed most of the hospitals.

How can the world be accustomed to this?

Almost daily, we hear the words “massacre” or “dozens of Gazans martyred in IDF shelling.” Perhaps these words no longer affect our hearts as much as they did; we seem to have become accustomed to them. How can the world become accustomed to someone killing dozens of peaceful citizens, whether in a shelter, school, displacement camp, or even in their homes?

Al-Shifa Hospital, where Ashraf and I worked, is emblematic: It was burned and destroyed, and the people seeking refuge there were massacred. Ashraf and I share the same struggles and questions. Even though I have now left Gaza, I still suffer from many bad, bloody memories.

The question that keeps running through my mind is this one: When will the world realize that each of us in Gaza has dreams and ambitions that are being destroyed in this war?

A crowd of people in the Al-Shifa Hospital emergency room.

recent

subscribe

get weekly emails with links to new content plus news about WANN