This pregnancy is not like my others. I have not been allowed to feel the joy I felt last time, to plan for the future and dream about where my child will go to school and how to decorate his room. In Gaza these days, I can only wonder whether I can find food to keep my baby healthy and how it will be to give birth in a tent.
The natural joys I felt for the births of my daughter and son have been overwhelmed by depression, fear and anxiety because of this continuing genocide.
Displacement has made us bankrupt. I have run out of food. My health condition is critical because of pregnancy. I have bleeding due to blood formation inside the uterus as a result of extreme fatigue. I went to Doctors Without Borders and was classified as a malnourished patient. I was transferred to a specialised clinic to examine my pregnancy. The result was they say my pregnancy is high-risk. I will most likely lose my baby.
I need to stay in the hospital. But the hospital does not have the capacity for me to stay.
I constantly have questions for myself about where I will give birth and whether the baby will be healthy. Will I find healthcare when I need it and will there be food for the baby? If I cannot find a home to live in, then will the baby be able to stay alive in a tent?
I feel dizzy all the time due to lack of food and weakness. I sleep most of the time and suffer from tremors due to hunger.
We used to live a beautiful life. My husband was an optician in a leading hospital. We have two children aged six and four. Then the war came and destroyed our home and my husband’s work. We have been displaced and have had to live through weeks in areas besieged by Israeli forces bombing and shelling around us. My children do not eat enough and have become malnourished, making it easy for them to fall ill and hard for them to move.
Then we lived in a ninth-floor apartment that had no water or electricity and cost $1,000 a month. I sacrificed meals and relied on donations for food but everything we receive is spent straight away. Prices are 10 times higher than they used to be, and to exchange bank notes we must give a commission of 50% to the traders because the banks are closed.
Israel ordered us to leave Gaza City but we had nowhere to go. We thought we would stay, that dying there is better than to live without shelter on the street. But now we have gone, relocated to central Gaza, near the town of Nuseirat, and we are living in a tent.
Before the war we used to think about our children’s future, now everything is different. We think about how we will survive today and what we will eat. I know I could die in pregnancy or from malnutrition and that the baby might not live to see birth.
But I don’t think about all of that now, I focus on each moment only.
• As told to Kaamil Ahmed
