A flight to safety for hurt children
Italy hospital tends to Gazans
Each of the children survived horrors. Each lost relatives in the strikes that injured them. All have struggled with the emotions of what they went through and what they face.
the evacuees make up a tiny fraction of the thousands of civilians, including many children, who have suffered grievous injuries over the course of Israel’s months-long campaign against Hamas and its bombardment of the gaza Strip. Experts say children are particularly vulnerable to burns and serious injuries from high-intensity attacks, especially in a crowded environment like much of gaza.
the explosion that injured Shaymaa, 5, in the southern gaza village of muwasi in January, killed her grandmother, injured her grandfather, and mangled the girl’s foot, according to lina gamal, Shaymaa’s aunt.
Shaymaa was rushed to nasser Hospital, where doctors quickly decided to amputate. they no longer had anesthesia, alcohol, or other means to clean the wound, forcing the doctors to rinse it with murky water. they performed a rapid surgery and hurried to help other wounded people crowding the halls, gamal said. for three days, gamal said, Shaymaa was “always screaming.”
gamal stayed at her niece’s side through sleepless nights. like many others, she registered the injured child for a chance to evacuate, through aid groups and several governments, to a hospital abroad. gamal offered herself as a caretaker, as Shaymaa’s parents needed to look after her siblings.
It was not until february, after lengthy background checks and negotiations — between officials of those countries and Egypt and Israel — that Shaymaa learned she was in the small group selected to evacuate, gamal said. from around gaza, the children and their caretakers journeyed toward the border city of Rafah, facing Israeli shelling and desperate competition for food, gamal said. from there they crossed into Egypt, where they were airlifted to Italy, on what for them was the first flight of their lives.
At the Rizzoli Orthopedic Institute in Bologna, Italy, though, doctors concluded that Shaymaa would need a second amputation to repair the damage and to stop an infection, gamal said.
When gamal heard the news, she collapsed to the floor, sobbing. She had watched Shaymaa become withdrawn and fearful after the first amputation, rarely laughing.
“When they change her dressing, she doesn’t like to see it,” gamal said. “Every time she sees her leg, she screams, ‘Cover me! Cover me!’ — not for people, for herself. She doesn’t want to see it.”
Shaymaa found some comfort with another evacuee, Sarah Yusuf, and her caretaker, niveen foad. Sarah, 5, had been badly injured in november in a strike that hit her family’s home, in Zawaida near Deir al Balah in central gaza. the attack left her pregnant mother partly paralyzed, her father missing, and her 2-year-old brother killed, said foad, a cousin of Sarah’s father.
She said she had found the girl with widespread burns and a broken pelvis at a hospital in Khan Younis, in southern gaza.
“When I saw her, Sarah was in a terrible state,” said foad, 44. “I decided from that moment that I will foster this child.”
After Sarah took shelter with them, foad’s husband registered the girl for evacuation. foad agreed to be her caretaker.
the evacuees knew little to nothing about Italy. nor did they know, on arrival, whether they would have to seek asylum, be allowed to bring family, or be forced to leave.
And despite the warm welcome from Italian officials and doctors, the children could not shed memories of gaza. One morning in monza, Italy, the sight of a plane over the hospital room of Abdel Rahman Al naasan, 5, filled him with fear.
“He thought it would bomb us,” said his grandmother, Rehab Al naasan. “He put his hands on his ears and leaned on the ground. He’s terrified. this whole generation of children is terrified.”