A ‘disproportionate toll’: A woman of Gaza on what Gaza’s women face
With courage and calmness, our reporter in Gaza has delivered a vital perspective on a war that’s now six months in. As a woman, she has been especially attuned to the conflict’s strain on mothers, daughters, and sisters. She joins our podcast with a full read of a recent story.
Ghada Abdulfattah would like you to know about Gaza, her home.
She talks of its people’s generosity. Of fresh fish and strawberries during better times. She talks of a new war that began last October, one that she then began covering for the Monitor, and one that she says “transcends any war I have previously witnessed” in its ferocity and the deprivation it has caused.
“While no one remains untouched by the ravages of war in Gaza, women bear the heaviest brunt,” Ghada says on our “Why We Wrote This” podcast.
A recent story of Ghada’s depicted that burden. In reporting it, she heard from women giving up food so that their children could eat. From a woman who cut off her hair, and her daughter’s, because of the challenge of maintaining hygiene, often using seawater.
“With each passing day, as the war raged on,” Ghada says, “what was once considered taboo for women became a norm.”
She recalls a woman on a school bench, her face weary, awaiting news of a son missing for months.
“She asked me, ‘When will it end?’” Ghada says. “Alas, no one knows the answer.”
Episode transcript
Clay Collins: Welcome to “Why We Wrote This,” a podcast about how Monitor journalists do their work. This week’s episode, in our Writer’s Read format, features a contributor from Gaza on her Monitor reporting there over the past six months. It includes a full read, by her, of one of her stories. One note: This was a recorded in the field, with some effect on sound quality.
Ghada Abdulfattah: Hello, I’m Ghada Abdulfattah, a Gaza-based reporter for the Monitor. My journey with the Monitor began in October, believing that this war would be but a fleeting moment lasting mere days or weeks. Never did I think it would stretch for six long months. I tried to paint vivid portraits to inform and acquaint readers with the harsh realities that are unfolding before my eyes.
Truth be told, these were realities foreign even to me. Prior to this war, never had I witnessed a woman clutching a carton box of sanitary pads, navigating the streets in search of such a precious commodity. I’m shocked at the forces that compelled her to break the chains of societal taboo.
I grew up in Gaza, loved it – and complained about it for most of the time.
There are some sides of Gaza that people do not know: Generous people, fantastic food, tasty fish, sweet strawberries, yummy knafeh. I love reporting in Gaza, about Gaza, and for Gaza. Though, at times, I grapple with the bitterness of how this small coastal city has treated us, branding us with the scars of neverending wars.
But the ongoing war gripping Gaza transcends any war I have previously witnessed or lived through. It is us being displaced, us being afraid, and us mourning. As a woman, I have seen first hand the disproportionate toll this war exacts on the lives of women. While no one remains untouched by the ravages of war in Gaza, women bear the heaviest brunt.
In the early days of this war, I met a woman frying tomatoes in a pan over a wood fire. I asked her what she found most vexing about being displaced, sheltering at a school with many women and strangers. She leaned in and whispered in my ear: “bathroom.” Hours spent waiting in line, the constant prioritization of her children’s needs over her own and even foregoing meals to avoid using the facilities.
Another woman confided in me – her voice, a delicate murmur – [about] her struggle to find sanitary pads, resorting to using pills to hold her menstrual cycle. Yet, another woman trimmed her own hair, as well as that of her daughter’s, for lack of means to wash it.
With each passing day, as the war raged on, what was once considered taboo for women became a norm.
Women stand in line, enduring hunger for the sake of their children. Every passing day, this war inflicts fresh wounds upon the women of Gaza. Never before had I witnessed a woman drawing water from the sea, for water, though scarce, is not typically sourced from such depths. She carried it to her humble tent – now her living room, kitchen, and yes, even her bathtub.
I approached another woman, beseeching her for an interview. She apologized, having just borrowed a plastic tub from a neighbor after going from one makeshift tent to another. Her intention was to grant her children a semblance of cleanliness.
A scene forever etched in my memory is that of a woman seated upon a school bench, her hand cradling her weary face. Clad in a somber black abaya, she awaits news of her son — a son lost to her for countless months. She asked me, “when will it end?”
Alas, no one knows the answer.
[What follows is a full read, by Ghada, of one of her recent stories, headlined “Snapshots from Gaza: By sheer will, Palestinian women eke out a life,” datelined Rafah and Deir Al-Balah, Gaza Strip. This is the text of the story as it appeared in the Monitor.]
Wafaa Abu Irjilia never dreamed she would become a single mother.
Six months ago, she was a housewife, happy to nurture her growing family with her husband, Ahmed – her rock and “strength” – by her side.
Now she is a widow raising four children between the ages of 2 and 7 in a tent alongside her own two sisters and six other young relatives. “If I need to leave the tent,” she says, “I have to tread carefully so as not to disturb the others.”
There is little time to grieve for her husband, “the kindest and most generous person I knew,” Ms. Abu Irjilia says. Instead, focus is on daily necessities: food, water, and the safety of her children.
“It is a huge responsibility on my shoulders,” she says.
Across the Gaza Strip, Palestinian women say they have been caught in a war of survival and adaptation ever since Israel began its bombardment in retaliation for Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack.
Ms. Abu Irjilia is one of some 3,000 Palestinian women who have been widowed, becoming heads of household overnight, according to United Nations Women. As many as a million women and girls are estimated to have been displaced, forced to try to create a sense of home and stability in desert tents or overflowing evacuee centers where privacy is impossible and sanitation is limited. Many have been uprooted multiple times, as each refuge has become newly unsafe.
Yet amid these unimaginable burdens, the women of Gaza are somehow rising to meet challenges that only seem to get heavier by the day: lack of sanitation, single parenthood, hunger, disease. Even pregnancy has become a life-threatening struggle.
It is a will to survive and keep their families alive that keeps Palestinian women in Gaza going – even as they no longer recognize the people they have become.
Strength has always been important to Wisam Hamdan.
As a personal trainer in Khan Yunis, she helped other women achieve their own fitness and strength goals. Now she lives in a makeshift tent on the outskirts of Rafah with her family. In the process, she has gone from lifting weights at the gym to carrying jerrycans of seawater back to her family’s tent to bathe.
“The burden of this war has fallen heavily on the women in Gaza,” she says, wrapped in the same prayer clothes she has worn for months.
Having lost weight and most of her once carefully toned muscle, Ms. Hamdan says she feels disconnected from her body. Her hands ache. Her body is fatigued. Her legs nearly drag when she walks. It’s as if she is inhabiting a body that is no longer hers.
By sheer will and determination, she has summoned a different kind of strength, the kind that enables her to carry on.
Still, “I yearn for the girl I used to be before the war,” she says.
Since she left her home barefoot under the threat of incoming Israeli missile strikes, Basma Hamdan has shared a room with her parents, two sisters, two brothers, and their children in an evacuee center hosting thousands.
“The war is so humiliating. When I go to the bathroom, I try to go early in the morning when there isn’t a long line,” she says.
Prior to the war, Ms. Hamdan, an aspiring teacher, had an evening routine of showering and then applying night cream and hand cream. Now “bathing is a luxury.”
Disheveled, wearing a frayed prayer gown, Ms. Hamdan searches for soap to clean the bathroom before her aging mother uses it. The gesture is an act of love, a preservation of dignity for the woman who nurtured her. But it is also one of survival, amid dismal sanitary conditions and an outbreak of hepatitis.
Crammed in with hundreds of other displaced families, she says, “I have never felt so isolated.”
She finds refuge in taking walks by herself along the sea. “I wish I could fly away from this war,” she says.
Asma Abu Daqqa discovered she was pregnant just weeks before Oct. 7 and the eruption of the Israel-Hamas war. Then, she daydreamed of the new addition to her happy family as she carefully prepared lunchboxes for her four young children.
Now Ms. Abu Daqqa has found herself in a makeshift tent in the al-Mawasi area, her home destroyed, her husband injured, struggling daily to find or purchase water and limited food, and washing laundry with seawater.
“No one in my family knew that I was pregnant until very recently, not even my parents,” Ms. Abu Daqqa says while baking bread over an open fire, her eyes tearing from the smoke.
Her stomach is small compared with previous pregnancies; there is no visible bulge. Like many Palestinians in Gaza, Ms. Abu Daqqa drinks dirty water and eats small amounts of processed canned food to survive.
Without access to prenatal care, “I have never checked on my baby’s health,” she says. “I am very concerned that I might lose my baby. I feel I am doing this baby an injustice.”
Walaa Abu Eliyyan’s contractions started at 1 a.m. on March 2.
The Emirati hospital was a kilometer away. Her mother-in-law and husband carried her on their shoulders, stumbling between tents in the pitch-black night, somehow managing to avoid shelling, airstrikes, and stray dogs.
“Giving birth in war is nothing but danger,” she says.
The U.N. estimates there are around 50,000 pregnant women in Gaza, and that more than 160 babies are delivered every day. The war has caused miscarriages to triple, while stillbirths, premature deliveries, and postpartum depression are reportedly rising, according to the World Health Organization.
But Ms. Abu Eliyyan was fortunate.
Once at the hospital, she spent hours in labor, with only an occasional nurse on hand for assistance. In the end, she gave birth to a baby boy, Qais – as Israeli military drones buzzed above and nearby airstrikes shook the ground.
The “recovery room” was packed with evacuees. Women came and plugged phone chargers in the electrical outlet above her head while strangers walked in and out to fill jerrycans with water.
Due to limited beds, Ms. Abu Eliyyan had to return to her tent only a few hours after delivery. There was little time to take in the joy of her newborn, no ability to hold a baby shower or cook food and share with neighbors for traditional Islamic birth celebrations. Instead, it was an immediate return to the fight for survival.
“Becoming a mother should be a time for celebration,” she says from her tent outside Rafah.
Amira Asy, a mother of three, once owned a thriving restaurant and catering business in Khan Yunis, providing spreads for wedding banquets, funerals, and graduations.
After an Israeli missile strike destroyed her kitchen, “the heart and soul” of her culinary creations, Ms. Asy was able to salvage utensils and some kitchenware from the rubble.
She lends her oversize pots to local residents and displaced families. And now, with the help of local organizations, she cooks again.
Local nongovernmental organizations and charities have contracted Ms. Asy to prepare meals for hundreds of displaced families in Rafah, providing her with large supplies of flour – a rarity in the besieged strip.
Each day this past Ramadan, rising before the break of dawn, she prepared a staggering 1,000 kilograms (2,200 pounds) of maftool, a traditional dish of small pearl-shaped hand-rolled wheat balls. At midday, she boiled them in large vats to be distributed across Rafah before the 6 p.m. sunset prayer, when Muslims break their fast.
“I want to live,” she says resolutely, “I want to recover. I want to help my family.”
Amid a war that has taken so much, “I cannot bear the thought of standing still and not taking action.”
Clay Collins: This full-read episode, featuring Ghada Abdulfattah, is based on a story that she reported for the Monitor. Find a link to the story in our show notes, along with links to more of Ghada’s work. This podcast episode was produced by Mackenzie Farkus for The Christian Science Monitor. Copyright 2024.
