Was Happened to the Gaza Neurosurgeon Who Fail to a wrenching Decision: A Memorandum from Abukhederi
He won’t let his children watch the news lest the harrowing images affect them, but when they’re not around, he and his wife tune in. It is unbearable. He says that we can not turn away from it.
It had only been a month since he left Gaza when NPR spoke to him last time. The physical exhaustion and the emotional wounds of the death and injuries he had to deal with as the chief neurosurgeon of the enclave’s largest medical complex were still fresh. He still had the same passion and hope in his voice.
Abukhederi and his family lived a comfortable life in Gaza before the war. He was at the top of his career ladder as a neurosurgeon with a bustling clinical practice and around 14 neurosurgery trainees to mentor at Al-Shifa Hospital and the European Hospital in southern Gaza.
He and his family moved into a single room at the hospital after they felt unsafe in their home due to Israeli strikes.
At his new job in the UAE, he has had to start from ground zero. He needs to establish a name for himself and build a referral system for patients to come.
They have a good life as in Gaza, they have nice places to go to and eat Middle Eastern food at some restaurants. But he does not have the appetite for any of it.
Source: Whatever happened to … the Gaza neurosurgeon who faced a wrenching decision
What Has Become of a Man After His Childhood Exile in Al-Ain: A Story with Farah Yousry, MD, for NPR
Even though he previously held a medical license to practice in the UAE, it took four months of waiting and paperwork for Abukhedeir to get permission to practice at a private medical center in the city of Al-Ain.
He was one of the hardest working men in the family. He was a third year computer science student in college. He loved his work and was full of passion and energy,” Abukhedeir says. All of that is gone. He can’t use his hands to work on computers. And it pains me that I can’t do anything about it.”
He lost his right ear, can’t properly use his legs because he needs physiotherapy and can’t move his hands due to contractures, a complication where burn scars mature, tighten and thicken, preventing movement of the affected area, Abukhedeir says. The situation weighs heavily on him.
Farah Yousry is the managing editor of Side Effects Public Media, a health reporting collaboration of NPR member stations across the Midwest, based at WFYI in Indianapolis. She has reported on a range of stories from the U.S., for the ABC News’ Arabic radio and television program. She has also worked as a journalist in Egypt, where she covered the Arab Spring.
A Palestinian Girl in Gaza Goes Viral: Kalled in her Pink Roller Skates, Her Hair in a White Shroud
The children are resilient but they are still healing. They seem upset when they remember what happened in Gaza. He adds that they thank God they’re safe but feel sad and worried about the family still there.
This week’s photo stood out, it shows a young girl wearing roller skates and covered in a white shroud. It’s been widely shared on social media, quickling becoming another defining image of the war in Gaza — a place UNICEF has called “a graveyard for children.”
There were 332 days of the war in which the ten-year-old Tala Abu Ajwa managed to survive. She and her family had fled on foot from one place to another eight times in the past 11 months, sometimes in the middle of the night.
Her father, Hussam Abu Ajwa, told NPR that his daughter wanted to live like the other kids.
The young girl went upstairs to play with her brother at 5 p.m. on Tuesday. An explosion shook the building just as Tala got to the ground floor.
Shrapnel sliced through the air, piercing her neck. The apartment in the building belonged to the Kiheel family, her father says.
She died at the entrance of the building. He heard the airstrike and went to look for her. It was a scene of carnage. Within minutes, she died.
Source: Killed in her pink roller skates, a Palestinian girl’s photo in Gaza goes viral
A Palestinian Girl’s Photo in Gaza Goes Viral: A Girl in Pink Roller Skates Wearing Her Pink Balloons and a Black Hole
The Israeli military says it takes precautions to limit civilian deaths in its hunt for Hamas, the group that launched the Oct. 7 attack that Israel says killed around 1,200 people.
At the hospital, photos show Tala still wearing her pink roller skates as her body’s covered in a white shroud. A man is handing off skates to a father. A video shows him in shock. Her mother is seen crumpled over Tala’s body.
We are all shocked. We never imagined it,” her father says. “My other kids are in shock. It feels like a nightmare, he says. I pray that God will allow her mom to be strong. She can’t believe what’s happened.”
Abu Ajwa says the airstrike wounded several children, still hospitalized, and killed eight other people, including a neighbor’s toddler son and the Kiheel family comprising the husband and wife, their three young children, and the kids’ two grandparents.
Abu Ajwa was a high school chemistry teacher before the war. His job meant he could afford the basics and some extras to lavish onto his eldest daughter, Tala.
Source: Killed in her pink roller skates, a Palestinian girl’s photo in Gaza goes viral
A friend of Tala, the first girl in a family of Gazans, who died of a tragic tragic encounter with her father
He says she would really want him to buy her roller skates. “I got them for her, and it was the reason, praise be to God, for her death when she went down The stairs will be a good place to play.
Tala was the middle child and, for most of her life, the only girl in the family, wedged between two brothers, until her youngest sibling, a sister, was born about a year ago.
The father shares photos of the family’s life before the war with NPR. In the other, she wrapped her dad’s neck in a pool. She wears dresses, headbands, a Daisy Duck sweater, and her school uniform. She laughing and caked in foam.
“She’d ask me ‘Why do we live like this with death and martyrs?’ He says that he would tell her that God would reward her when the war is over.
The day before she died, her father said her dreams were to go back to school and become a dentist. According to a report by the United Nations, most of Gaza’s schools have been damaged or destroyed. Children haven’t been in school in nearly a year, with classrooms turned into crowded shelters for displaced families with nowhere else to go.
Tala also had one wish for September: She wanted to celebrate her younger brother’s 5th birthday with presents and friends to distract from the war. Abu Ajwa promised her he’d try.