Save our family & rebuild dad's ruined Gaza dream

I invite you to read this story below about my late father’s life, hopes, dreams and final days in Gaza. If after reading it, you feel inspired to offer any support toward rebuilding my father’s dream, it will be received as a blessing with deepest gratitude. My 60-year old mother, two brothers who suffer from severe autism, nieces and relatives are stranded at a UNRWA school near the Rafah crossing. The money raised will enable us to:

1) Continue in our efforts to get our brother Mohamed his heart medicine, beta blocker Cardivilol 6.25, which is out of supply in Gaza

2) Send money to our mother to pay for extra supplies, which are as much as 10x more expensive than usual

3) Pay for safe exit of our mom, brothers, sister in law and nieces through the Rafah crossing

4) Help our family restart life from nothing. Our dream, once the war is over, is to rebuild our father's home and garden, which were destroyed by Israel in November.

In memory of my dad, Bashir Abusamra

Since dad returned to Gaza after retiring from a 40-year career as a civil engineer and architect in Saudi Arabia, he would frequently send us videos of the garden he was designing in the backyard. With meticulous attention, he planted flowers and fruits in hopes of nurturing them into a paradise that he and my mom had, for decades, dreamed of creating in the land of their birth.

Dad, whose name was Bashir, was forced to flee Gaza in 1967 at 10 years old, along with his then-pregnant mother and two sisters. My grandfather, an army veteran, had fled earlier by swimming across the sea to Egypt, where he was waiting for his family to join him in exile. The journey was hard on my grandmother, and she died only weeks after leaving Gaza due to complications that arose after giving birth to dad’s younger brother. Losing his mother would forever remain the biggest scar on my dad’s heart. In his earliest memories, she is always in Palestine, and it has always seemed to me that Gaza was where my father’s heart forever resided.

Largely for this reason, year after year, dad never wavered from his desire to return to Gaza. This became a possibility for him only because he married my mom, a relative who had managed to remain in Gaza throughout the waves of displacement. Through their marriage, dad gained a Palestinian passport that would, he hoped, someday facilitate his return to his motherland.

But family was always the priority for dad, and his deepest wish was to give his six children as much of a possibility to thrive in life as possible. And so, he pursued a career in Saudi Arabia, helping to design and build many aspects of modern Jeddah. We were all born and educated in the Saudi port city, although never naturalized as citizens.

Once I completed my PhD in bioscience in 2016 and moved to the United States, and my sister Hala was married in 2017, dad and mom decided to make their lifelong dream into a reality. In 2018, they sold the family home in Jeddah. Years earlier, dad had designed a home in similar likeness in the Shujaiya neighborhood in Northern Gaza that has long been the home of the Abu Samra family’s ancestors. My brothers Mohamed, 30, and Munir, 28, returned to Palestine with mom and dad. They both suffer from autism and need a great deal of support, and therefore couldn’t remain in Saudi Arabia where they would need to be working to sustain the right of residency.

Upon returning to Gaza, dad spent much of his days working the land, with deep love. It was hard work for a man in his early sixties, but dad was passionate, determined and full of joy. The garden’s abundance was perhaps a reflection of these qualities. Within just four years of returning Shujaiya, dad’s garden had flourished in every direction. The white cherries that grew on two trees in the garden were among dad’s favorite fruits. Other trees and bushes were filled with figs, pears, apples, oranges, lemons and strawberries. Another fruit that thrived in my dad’s garden was the papaya, which he frequently promised would be perfectly ripe in time for our visits in the summer. Dad would also brag happily that he was the first to bring passion fruit to Gaza. I believe the passion fruits flourished in his garden due not only to the fertile soil, but my dad’s own passion.

He would often send me, Hala and our two other sisters, Heba and Maysa, photos and videos of his gardening progress, and let us know that both he and the fruits were awaiting our visits. We all live abroad, me in Boston where I am working as a scientist, and my sisters in Jeddah. “The most beautiful flower for the most beautiful flower,” he said in one short mobile phone video. “A gift for you, my beloved daughters. Here is a beautiful red flower, MashaAllah (God has willed it)!”

The house and garden meant everything to dad. Neighbors and relatives who lived nearby would call it the “Abu Samra castle.” It was truly a product of dad’s love and creativity – a manifestation of his heart’s deepest wish.

It doesn't come as a surprise that at about the same time that my dad died as a direct result of Israel’s total siege on Gaza, his dream home was reduced to rubble by Israeli airstrikes on the Shujaiya neighborhood. Just weeks after his 64th birthday, dad was buried in a grave near the Rafah crossing with Egypt on Nov. 17. We heard through neighbors around the same time that the Abu Samra castle had been demolished; the only recognizable feature was the distinctive dome that lay atop the rubble. If destroying the house was not enough, Israeli bulldozers trampled and crushed all of dad’s fruits and flowers.

Deciding to leave their home weeks earlier had been a painful and difficult choice for my parents. Shujaiya was under intense bombardment from the start, and residents received an evacuation notice from the Israeli army in the early weeks of the war. Mom left her sister behind because my Aunt Naima had a weak heart and struggled to walk. They haven’t been in touch since.

It didn’t take long for dad to die from heart failure. He had been taking four different pills every day to treat hypertension and diabetes. But once he’d run through his supply – 30 to 40 days into the Israeli assault – there was no way of replenishing his prescriptions. One late Thursday evening in November at the UNRWA school where they were taking shelter, dad started feeling unwell. He was losing his breath and feeling fatigued, having not eaten for three days and barely drinking even a bottle of water.

Since UNRWA closed its doors at 7pm for security reasons, there was no response to knocks for help for hours. There was also no phone connection to call an ambulance because, from Wednesday to Saturday, Israel cut off all communication networks to the area. By the time UNRWA had arranged a car to drive dad to the hospital – a risky journey prone to air, ground and sea strikes –it was too late. Before he reached the hospital, dad had died. It was the early morning of Friday Nov. 17.

Dad’s final weeks were horrifying – and my mom, Mohamed and Munir, along with Munir’s wife Rola and two children, Mira and Maria, are still living the nightmare. They along with hundreds of others are sheltering in the courtyard of an UNRWA school, an open-air space covered by a makeshift ceiling made of nylon. There are about 10,000 people sharing each bathroom in the school. Mom says she regularly queues for six hours, although she, and dad because he was diuretic, often couldn’t wait and relieved themselves in line. She says the best time to queue is 12am; If you are lucky, you’ll make it in before 5am.

It’s been three months since mom took a shower. The water they drink is unclean because that’s all that is available. Some commercial trucks are able to cross in through the Rafah border carrying basic items like flour, biscuits and diapers – but all of these goods are being sold to people at five or 10 times the normal price. The food ration they receive once or twice a week includes a single 500g package of feta cheese, to be split among six people. Other than that, mom needs to buy everything.

Mom pays people to get her phone charged every few days, with money I managed to send to her via very complicated means. But the mobile phone connection has only worked once or twice a week. In between, all I do is agonize about whether she and my brothers are still alive.

I worry about Mohamed in particular. Mohamed caught rheumatoid fever when he was 12 and he had a metal heart valve replacement after that. He needs medication to survive, including an anticoagulant to prevent blood clots. He takes the beta blocker Cardivilol 6.25 every day, as well as Co-diovan, Baby Asprin, Concor 5mg and Lazix. Cardivilol 6.25 has not been available anywhere in Gaza for almost a month, and the others are available only in small quantities after a long waitlist.

Mohamed’s case is sadly not unique. Thousands of Gazans are struggling to access life-giving medications. And the devastating fact is that when they succumb to their illnesses, like my father, they are not counted among those killed by Israel – even though it is Israel’s total blockade of aid, medicines and supplies that is murdering them in untold numbers.

The last time I saw my dad was in 2019. I traveled alone into Gaza through the Rafah border with Egypt, following an arduous and expensive three-day car journey from the Cairo International Airport. It is always an ordeal to go to Gaza, but I made the effort for Munir’s wedding. Palestinians in the diaspora with family in Gaza always have to think twice about going to visit family. Not least because trying to leave Gaza can be even harder than getting in because you need to apply for permission that can sometimes take up to three months to receive.

Paying a bribe sometimes works. Before Oct. 7, you could pay $1,200 per person for more expedited passage out of Gaza. It now costs $10,000 – and there is no guarantee that it isn’t a scam because you are paying someone who knows someone who knows someone who can get your family out. Even if I do find a way and raise the money to get my mom, brothers, sister-in-law and nieces to safety, they don’t have the papers they would need to travel anywhere. My nieces do not even hold Palestinian passports.

Even in the unlikely event that we were able to find them somewhere to stay, the most difficult task may be convincing mom to leave. Even though she is living in squalor conditions. Even though she would have nothing to return to in Shujaiya if she survives the war, mom insists that leaving would be a betrayal to dad. While this reality is wrenching for my helpless heart as I watch from afar not knowing if she will survive, deep inside I understand why she feels this way.

Dad had been anticipating a visit from me this past summer, eager to show me the garden of his dreams. Many circumstances, including the cost of traveling, got in the way. Sometimes I wish I could rewind time, to give my father one final embrace. But Allah knows best.

Alhamdulillah, Praise be to God, we consider dad to be one of the lucky ones. He was buried in a more dignified way than so many martyrs in Gaza. He was buried in an individual gravesite near the Rafah crossing, whereas so many thousands of others have been buried in mass graves or worse, remain under the rubble. While I can never be certain, I believe in my dad’s final hours, he sensed that his home and garden were destroyed. With a shattered, broken heart, he died along with them. May he find a more beautiful abode in paradise.

I pray that my mom, my brothers, nieces and cousins and extended family will survive these horrors. With each passing hour, it gets harder to hold onto hope, but we try. Israel’s destruction of Gaza dismantled every brick of life that my father carefully laid for decades. All I am left with is two wishes: To honor my dad by rebuilding a home for mom and my brothers and, to give dad a dignified burial near to the home he loved so very dearly.