Abu Watan: I Was a Healer—Now I Am the One in Need

For fourteen months, I lived inside Kamal Edwan Hospital in North G@za . I wasn’t just a volunteer—I was there every second, every hour, because I had to be. The emergency room, the surgery ward—I knew every corner. I stayed awake when others slept. I held the hands of the wounded, I pressed against bleeding wounds, I whispered words of comfort to those taking their last breaths. We treated thousands. Some we saved. Some we lost.

I gave everything I had to that hospital.But when I was released from detention , there was no home waiting for me. My house is gone. Nothing but rubble. Now, I sleep in a tent with my family, surrounded by destruction. We have no food. No clean water. No shelter from the cold. Hunger tightens its grip on us every day. But it’s not just us. Everyone around me is suffering. The people I once treated now stand beside me, displaced, starving, desperate.

I am asking for help—not just for myself, but for them. I need to find shelter, to get food and water, to survive. For my family. For my neighbors. For the people who have lost everything.

And my mother… she is injured. Her eyes—she was taken to Egypt for treatment, but she needs urgent surgery. Without it, she could lose her sight forever. I have saved lives, yet now I stand powerless, unable to save my own mother.

I never thought I would be the one asking. But today, I have no choice. If you can help, please—help us survive.