niraliberalism / @niral.bsky.social

GAZA DIARY: This is just one day, condensed into two and a half minutes. We were at Aqsa hospital delivering pediatric tracheostomy tubes when we heard a loud explosion, some tents on the compound burst into flames. Lives saved, lives lost. It’s hard you know, to describe in words what it’s like here, the degree to which it defies logic. Even driving around, when you talk to friends, colleagues, people – no one here can really cope with or comprehend what has happened to them. It’s been over a year and it still doesn’t feel real. No one is “used to” the apocalyptic scenes, how hard it is just to survive. Conversation openers are “what did you eat”, jokes are made about the last time there was chicken (a month ago), there are cynical celebrations at the arrival of tomatoes (insanely overpriced) for the first time in weeks. Within minutes of meeting a stranger you immediately know who has died from their family, that’s the sort of information that is shared after “how are you holding up”? There is a massive shortage in pediatric sized tracheostomy tubes (ie children sizes, used mostly to decrease dependency on ventilators), without which often children don’t stabilize enough to be taken off the machines in the ICU. We met Mahmoud who was stabilized enough from tubes I dropped off last time I was here. It’s hard to see in the video, but in that part where we’re talking about his head – it’s his brain pulsing that you see, where his skull bone was removed and the skin stitched together. As we were walking through, darling little Aseel came running up to me. She’s unrecognizable in the video her mother showed us, of her just after the Israeli strike that also injured her sister and father. I promised her I’d be back and we’d paint our nails together. We’re also looking for the creams the doctors said she, her sister, and father need for their burn/injury scars. A loud explosion startled everyone, someone shouted it was in the hospital compound. As I write this, the latest death / injury is two killed, one in critical condition, and 27 injured. The strike hit one of the tents and the fire spread quickly, but after the last time there was a strike here – the one where we saw the horrific viral images of a teenager burning to death, there was a firetruck close by. Earlier we dropped off a portable ultrasound to Dr Lubna whose medical tent we support. Its in the garden of what was her home, now a blown out carcass, although she and her family still live in the inner rooms on the top floor. And lastly, Dr Mohammed who you see in this video, he’s the head of the ICU in Aqsa, he’s “used to” people coding, but the other day it was his mother. He managed to save her life. He’s exhausted, physically, mentally, in all ways imaginable. Everyone is. Background: I'm back in Gaza on my 4th humanitarian mission with my charity @INARAorg