A glimpse of Amal (hope) to reunite with my family

My name is Abdallah Nasrallah, and I’m a 20 year old from Gaza City who has been displaced numerous times by the current war. I recently managed to evacuate to Egypt but had to leave the rest of my family in Rafah, where they are struggling to survive. I started this campaign to try to raise the money that they need to escape Gaza like I did.

Before this war, I lived with my mother Amal, my sisters Lama and Nesma, and my brother Mohammed. I was a junior in the English department at Islamic University. My mother worked as a first grade teacher and had recently put her life savings into renovating. My sister Lama had a handmade accessory small business and was engaged to be married. My brother Mohammed had put all of his life savings to build a cafe with his friends in the hopes of having a bright future as a local business owner.

And then October came. Islamic University was destroyed, so I can’t finish college. The home that my mother had poured her life savings into, and that had housed all the memories of my father who died when I was young, was bombed and reduced to rubble.

My sister’s business and my brother’s café were both destroyed. Even Lama’s wedding clothes were destroyed, as was her fiance’s home. We are left with nothing—no home, no school, no employment or income. We’ve already had to evacuate multiple times. First everyone in my multi-generational home had to flee the Rimal neighborhood as it was destroyed. We ran on foot to my other sister’s home and all crammed into the apartment with her. Then we got the order that Gaza City had to be evacuated. We had two cars for 70 people, and nowhere to go. We managed to hook up a flatbed trailer to the back of one of the two cars, and I and all of the other young men in the family were tied onto this open trailer with as many belongings as we could hold, while everyone else crammed into the two cars for a terrifying ride over bombed out streets, amid bombs falling. All 70 of us stayed in a large room in Khan Younis with one bathroom that didn’t work, and with no electricity. We slept on the floor, with no heat and very little food or clean water. We struggled to survive. Then Khan Younis got the order to evacuate, and we had to flee to Rafah. Forty-five of us were allowed to stay in an apartment, but the rest of my family has been living in tents. Conditions are miserable, and there is constant bombing. Everyone is afraid for their lives at every moment. And none of us have any home to return to if this war ends.

I am lucky that I was able to escape Gaza, but there is no peace for me as long as my mother and my sisters and brother remain in so much danger, with such little food and no heat, and the possibility of an impending invasion. In order to get them out of Gaza and into Egypt, I have to raise the fees that are needed from Gazans to cross the border, which is $5,000 per person, with additional costs for transportation and other travel-related fees. To save my mother, and siblings, I need to raise at least $30,000. I appreciate any donation you can make to help my family, no matter how small. I have committed to saving my family, and I won’t rest until I see them again on this side of the border. Please help if you can. Thank you so much.