Gaza children traumatized after Israel’s war
It is still hard for Nada Joma’a, a 14-year-old girl from the Sheikh
Radwan neighbourhood in northern Gaza City, to forget the time when an
Israeli missile destroyed her house, killed her mother and cut her leg
during the 22-day Israeli air raid on the Gaza Strip that ended on Jan.
18.
“It’s the hardest memories I have ever had in my life. I can’t forget
the scene when the missile hit our house, the huge explosion, the dust,
the smoke and the rubble fell on our heads. I can’t forget when I saw my
mother was dead, my sister and my brother wounded,” said Nada, who still
looks gloomy and sad, and sometimes goes deep into the horrible
memories.
Nada became more silent after the tragedy. Returning from school in
the afternoons, Nada usually spends most of her time sitting at her
simple desk doing her homework and refusing to go out to play.
Even when she tries to smile, her beautiful face shows signs of
sadness. “It was a painful and a difficult day,” she keeps repeating.
“She suffers from nightmares. She could not help remembering in
details what happened to her,” the girl’s father Jamal Joma’a said.
He, too, can’t forget the family catastrophe that occurred on the
second day of the New Year.
“I went to buy some food, and when I came back home, the Israeli
planes fired a rocket at my house. I rushed inside, and saw smoke and
dust filling the entire house while my family was lying in blood,” he
recalled.
He found his wife dead with their little infant, slightly hurt, in
her arms, while Nada and her younger sister Dalia, 10, were lying beside
their mother. “I thought that all of them were dead until Nada screamed
‘Baba we are here.’”
Rescue teams and ambulances arrived at the house and sent the dead
mother and her three children to the hospital. Nada’s leg was in very
bad shape, and it was hard for the doctors to repair it. So “the only
choice was to cut (off) her leg to save her life,” her father said in a
choked voice, with tears in his eyes.
He said Nada had been reluctant to visit her friends and to play with
neighbors because she felt uncomfortable about her handicap. “She always
stands in front of the mirror, looking at the shape of her body and
keeps weeping.”
Nada often spends her time alone staring at the walls, the window and
the ceiling inside her room. She often gazes at a picture of her late
mother hanging on the wall and talks to her. “I try to help her,” her
father said. “But what can I do? I really don’t know.
“Her aunt and many of our relatives came to visit us at home, trying
to talk to Nada and to take her out, but she refused,” he continued.
He added that such a situation for Gaza Strip children, who have a
feeling of insecure life, “means that a complete generation of children
may grow up into groups of militants who will be more violent and more
fanatic.”
Xinhua
|