Aman Al-Mabhouh’s life was split in two in the blink of an eye. One moment, she was sitting with her husband and children in their modest home in Gaza. The next, everything was fire, dust, and silence. An Israeli airstrike had hit a nearby house, but the force of the blast tore through hers, leaving Aman buried in rubble, and her family torn apart.

She speaks softly now, the weight of grief settling into every word. That night, her husband was killed. Her son, Mohammed, too. Then came the news of her daughter. All gone. Aman lost an eye and part of her jaw, but what haunts her most are the absences: the empty chairs, the quiet that lingers after laughter has been silenced.

Like thousands of Palestinians, Aman is trapped in Gaza, not just by bombs and borders, but by the cruel stalling of medical hope. She briefly made it to Egypt for surgery, but with the Rafah crossing closed again, her treatment remains suspended. She waits. Not just for healing, but for a moment of mercy in a war that has spared neither her body nor her soul.

Her story is not an exception in Gaza. It is the echo of a collective pain, a people grieving, wounded, waiting, enduring.