Of this Palestinian family of seven, only Shaima, the mother, and two children remain.

On Friday night, the family gathered around a makloub, a typical Palestinian dish, Shaima recalls in front of a photo of this last meal taken together. The following Sunday, her neighborhood in Rafah was bombed by the Israeli army, and her house collapsed. It was February 12, 2024. That night, this mother lost two children, the baby she was carrying, and her husband. She herself was seriously injured in the legs.

With her sister-in-law and two of her surviving children, Shaïma was able to flee to Egypt before the border was closed. Then Qatar evacuated them along with other seriously injured people. From the hospital in Doha, where she had to undergo around fifty operations, the 33-year-old woman recounts this night of horror. A story that she tells with modesty and a certain distance, because in order not to collapse, in public, this mother locks her emotions away. “When I heard Houdeyfa’s voice, I was reassured, I said to myself ‘He is alive’. I did not hear Jinan, Muhammad and my husband, I understood that they were all dead. I was under the debris, my foot was burning and it was bleeding.”

In her phone, Shaima has kept the images of this tragedy: the missile that hit her house, her son Houdeyfa, 11, who was pulled out of the rubble covered in blood, and the body of her twin sister Jinan, still hanging on the wall of the house, terribly mutilated. While Shaima was almost pregnant, a piece of shrapnel pierced her stomach, cutting the umbilical cord. The baby she was carrying was stillborn when she gave birth two days later. Muhammad, 16, her elder, did not survive either.

Houdeyfa, for his part, almost lost his sight as a result of his injuries, but fortunately, his face is now intact. And his little sister Myriam, 7, was not at home when the attack took place. Since then, the two children no longer want to sleep without their mother. In her hospital room, they live squeezed against each other.