Abubaker Abed
The Electronic Intifada / July 11, 2024
This is a story of two men named Riyad.
The first Riyad is a 23-year-old nursing student living on the outskirts of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza.
He has suffered enormously during the current genocidal war.
One of his brothers and many others in his extended family have been killed. His house and his father’s farmland have been bulldozed.
One day in January, Riyad had just bought flowers for a friend who was injured.
Riyad was heading to visit his friend in hospital, when he stopped at a building that had been bombed. Civil defense workers were searching for people under the rubble and Riyad went to help them.
“We managed to pull three people out, but they were unfortunately taking their last breaths,” Riyad said.
Attention turned to a woman at ground level who was seeking help. As Riyad and a civil defense worker moved toward her, an explosion took place.
“There was blood all over my body,” he said. “That was the last thing I saw before becoming unconscious.”
Adam, Riyad’s 15-year-old brother, is now his carer.
Adam referred to how one of Riyad’s legs was badly burned. “He had little chance of keeping it,” Adam said.
The pain was severe and with few, if any, other options available in Gaza’s beleaguered healthcare system, doctors decided on an amputation.
Riyad is unable to sleep at night.
“Every morning, he asks me ‘when will this war end?’” Adam said.
“But I have no answer. The circumstances in which he is living are unimaginable.”
‘Depressing and painful’
Riyad is among the thousands of people who have undergone amputations since the war began in October.
Adapting to the new reality is proving extremely difficult for Riyad.
“I am always trying to forget about my amputated leg despite how it feels like there are flames burning my body,” he said.
“But it pains me when people look at me in sympathy,” he added. “It is depressing and painful when children pass by me and say that I have an amputated leg.”
The second Riyad in this story is 62-years-old.
Riyad has diabetes and other health issues. Four years ago, he had his right leg amputated below the knee.
With medicine becoming increasingly scarce in Gaza, his other leg had to be amputated during the early stages of the current genocidal war.
“If this war hadn’t broken out, I would have saved my only leg,” he said.
Riyad fears that he could go into a diabetic coma.
He spends much of his time at al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah.
A large number of other amputees are taking shelter in the hospital. Many have to lie on the floor.
Doctors at the hospital have expressed shock at hearing amputees crying in pain.
Overworked and massively under-resourced, the staff are unable to provide adequate care for many patients.
“I am alone in a wheelchair sleeping at the hospital almost all week,” Riyad said. “I suffer from heart problems and various chronic diseases.”
On a number of occasions, Riyad had to eat salt. It was all he had to try and ward off his hunger.
He has repeatedly lost consciousness due to the lack of sugar in his blood.
Riyad has been deprived of food, clean water, medicine and other essentials.
The only way that his situation and that of Gaza’s people more generally will improve is if the war ends.
“All I ask for is a normal, peaceful and good life,” he said. “Nothing more.”
Abubaker Abed is a journalist and translator from Deir al-Balah refugee camp in Gaza
