'I can't forget horror'

Becoming a mother twice in Gaza at the height of the war

- Hoda Osman

Hadeel Al Gherbawi was seven months pregnant when the war started in October 2023. Up until that point the 26-year-old had prepared meticulously for her son's arrival.

She visited her doctor twice a month because the pregnancy was high risk, had regular ultrasounds and took vitamins. “I love the details,” she says.

Living on the east side of Gaza City, close to the border with Israel, and knowing that being pregnant would make moving fast difficult, she decided to go to her parents in the west of the city that first day. “I thought it was just going to be a few days and I would go back.”

The family has since been displaced 13 times and the house she shared with her husband has been destroyed.

In late October, about five weeks before her due date, Al Gherbawi was near an Israeli strike on a residential building in Gaza City. “It felt like an earthquake,” she remembers. She fled to al-Shifa hospital, where displaced people filled every space. Using a bathroom was nearly impossible.

“I can’t forget the horror of that night,” she says. There was a place for unidentified bodies and a barrel for body parts. The strike had reportedly killed more than 100 people. Al Gherbawi remembers the smell. “I couldn’t take it. I was pregnant. I felt sick ... may God have mercy on those who were killed.” Al Gherbawi and her husband decided it was safer to go south to have her baby. In displacement camps, using the bathroom remained a nightmare.