Translated by Hadeel Jamal
Editor’s Note: Ibrahim Matar is a Palestinian doctor who lived and worked at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in central Gaza during the first months of the genocide. The following is drawn from an unpublished collection of testimonies from the hospital–a record of what he saw, both as a physician and as a witness.
I saw all of that, O God.
I saw people rushing to the hospital after a bombing, covered in blood, sand, and ash. I saw their faces overcome with shock at the horror of the event, seeming unable to comprehend what had just happened. I saw their bodies stop breathing because smoke from the fire had seeped into their throats, or because shrapnel had torn their chest open.
I saw bodies exhaling dust like a sponge that had been dipped in ash. I saw children bleed and lose consciousness because of heavy rocks that had fallen on their weak heads. I saw people whose faces, features, and names had changed, making the injured unrecognizable. “Clean the dust off his face, maybe we’ll recognize him,” they’d say. And so they did, and they’d discover that he was so-and-so, the kind, simple man who had been sitting in his house because he found no other place where he could escape.
I saw mothers running through the corridors, crying like the world had shrunk inside their hearts, gasping with a flood of questions, shouting, “Are they alive? Who is still alive? Where are my children? I have no one but them, O God.”
I saw people lose track of the count of victims because of the sheer number: “How many dead did we count today? Did we miscount? In the last hour I mentioned to you two martyred girls, two children with bleeding, injured heads, 10 young men without vital signs because of a strike, lumps of flesh in a small bag, and open heads with brains showing.”
I heard the voices of the bereaved, screaming at the top of their lungs until their throats were raw and their voices tore through the air, wailing in the ear of the martyr:, “Where did you go and leave me? Who will I have left after you?” and “You didn’t tell me you were leaving. You could have told me so I could say goodbye.” You feel their voices emerging, wounded, from the hollow of their souls, from the very depths of their sorrow. I heard one of them say, “O God, we are good, wretched people–why is all this happening to us?”
I saw masses of people laid on the hospital floor, their bodies smelling of ash, blood, and steel, as though they were part of a sacrificial ceremony.
I saw children dying in intensive care units, alone, unknown to anyone, with no one to mourn them. Children without names, found lying in the corner of a building near a bombing. They are wrapped in a shroud and labeled, “Unknown, No. 999.”
I saw other children, some as young as 9, survive a bombing without parents or older siblings and bear the weight of the responsibility, with one child telling me, “Please, doctor, don’t tell my little brother that my mom and dad are dead. I’ll just tell him they traveled.”
I saw a child, alone, crying and shouting at me, “Where’s my dad?” I stammered, embarrassed, wanting to run away because I did not know.
I saw heart attack patients dying on the floor of emergency departments because there were no beds available, all of them already occupied.
I saw worms crawling out of the wounds of the injured who had just arrived from under the shelling and rubble. The injured would sleep in the wards without antibiotics. I saw young men die due to the lack of antibiotics and the absence of a medical team to monitor them, causing them to get blood poisoning from their infected wounds.
I saw the doctors and nurses hear the sounds of clashes while on duty. How could a doctor do their job with tanks at the hospital’s entrance?
I saw how five doctors from the emergency department were martyred–five doctors the same age as me. We were friends, through the fear and the sleepless nights.
I remember when we were on a night shift with Dr. Muath, who was working without pay. We would laugh and tell bad jokes, and he told me that he dreamed of going to England to pursue a specialization. But he died. It was hard for me to grasp the idea that he had been talking to me last night and today he was no longer with us.
I remember how Dr. Duaa Awad, after a long night shift treating the injured and wounded, went home at 8 in the morning, then returned to the hospital as a lifeless body at 10.
I saw young doctors like the one sitting with us today–Dr. Saeed, a resident doctor– perform surgeries on the floor of the reception room without anesthesia or assistance.
I saw people discuss the news, politics, and the fate of the war, sharing ideas, only to become news themselves. I saw how, after greeting a colleague in the morning, you’d offer condolences to their family in the evening. I sat with someone who was talking to himself and wondering: “All those wounded and martyred people were like us an hour ago. They were with us in life just a little while ago. When, I wonder, will our turn come?”
I am tired of the language of war.
I am tired of the language of war, of the news of so much death, of the writings about war, of the photographs of crying and the videos of blood on the ground, of the broken buildings and trees and the fleeing birds and the empty streets and the mournful days, of the names of the martyrs and their beautiful eyes, of our eyes peeled to the news like madmen, of the constant fear that accompanies every breath we take, of the shock of the bereaved and the breakdowns of mothers and the hysteria of children, of waiting for death while anticipating all the hellish possibilities, of the shelling both from us and on us, of the sky that I loved but which has started to fall on us, of the stars that we no longer count because they might be jets, of the faces of politicians and their threats to take our lives tomorrow, of concealing our fear, of our stubborn insistence on hiding our fragility, of trying to close children’s eyes, of theories of peace and theories of war, of conferences and neckties, of the distortion of truth and the depravity of the world, of the game of chess being played against Gaza. I am tired of my love and fear for Gaza, and tired of my tiredness.
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