What lies ahead is the beginning of something more difficult and greater. Ahead of us are years filled with sorrow that will never end, days of accumulated pain, and long hours of crying and lamenting. Our wounds are much deeper than they can easily heal. Surely, their scars will remain etched in us for as long as we live, like a thorn deeply embedded in the left side of our chests. We are now living with the hope of reunion, searching for a ray of light in a world filled with darkness, our faces disfigured by blood, and our hearts turned to stone.
— Maryam Hasanat, Gaza Refugee, January 17, 2025—two days after Hamas and Israel signed a ceasefire agreement.
I first met Maryam on Facebook in March of 2024. I had briefly written about her in my story The Women Who Live Between the Barbed Wire and the Sea—about the trials of Gaza refugee women from six different families. That story began with a line about Maryam: “In the next few days, after this story gets published, I will either save a pregnant woman and her child’s life, or I will fail.” This is the rest of her story.
Maryam was twenty-five years old, a college graduate, a wife and a mother to a two-year-old son. Now she faced death.
She always talked to me in a kind, matter-of-fact way, answering my questions as if she was not in the middle of a genocide. “My family consists of nine people and we live in a very small tent. I am seven months pregnant and it is very hard to give birth in such circumstances.”
Maryam wanted me to help her fundraise so she, her husband Mohammad and her son Kamal could evacuate to Egypt, a typical refugee request. And, unfortunately, she had also had a typical refugee experience: “In November the IDF (Israeli Defense Force) shot my brother-in-law as he was on his way to see his wife and children. They refused to allow an ambulance to retrieve him until after he bled to death.”
By then I was used to stories like that so I wasn’t surprised at all. At least her other family members were still alive, even if they were all homeless like her. They had survived the winter and lack of food, but Maryam faced a more severe dilemma: “I needed a C-section for my first child and I will need a C-section for this one, but there is no anesthesia available.”
A relative of hers had faced similar circumstances three weeks prior, so the hospital performed the C-section without anesthesia. Mother and child both died of shock.
Maryam’s timeline was short. Her baby was due in late May. We needed to collect twenty-five thousand dollars, get one of her relatives outside of Gaza to withdraw it in cash, fly to Egypt, and bribe the officials to get permission to cross the border. She clung to me in terror.
“Please help me set up a GoFundMe campaign. I will die without your help,” she pleaded.
I promised her I would find someone. I wasn’t worried about the outcome. I thought our meeting was ordained by Fate. I had always admired the Virgin Mary, most of the women in my family were named Mary and Maryam was a writer like my mother. She even studied under Refaat Alareer, the famous Palestinian poet. That’s all I needed to know. I played my role accordingly and started calling everyone I knew.
Maryam messaged me everyday in tears, doubtful it would work.
“I’m scared!’ she said in the middle of the night as bombs were falling all around her.
“Don’t worry,” I replied. “It’s going to happen.”
“But it’s so complicated. It will take time. What if they can not arrange for me to travel before I give birth?”
“The money will come. Give it a week or two.” My confidence never waivered.
A friend of a friend named Mark Hoffman volunteered to help. He opened the fundraiser and broadcast Maryam’s story everywhere. Between us, our acquaintances donated many thousands of dollars, but it still wasn’t enough.
Then #OperationOliveBranch, a Western Pro-Palestinian group trying to help individual families in Gaza, picked the story up and made a reel for it that went viral on social media.
“Please stop what you’re doing and watch this video in its entirety…” Hi’ilani, a spokeswoman for the organization, demanded.
And people did. The GoFundMe received hundreds of individual donations. Maryam had $40,000 in a week.
“It’s such a miracle!” she said. “You have brought hope to my heart.”
The proper arrangements were made. The family scheduled a day to leave a month before the baby’s due date. We were all relieved. Then, the day before they were supposed to go, Israel threatened to invade Rafah and close the border. They had a tiny window of opportunity to make it. They were going to be okay. Then, the morning they were supposed to leave, Maryam went into labor.
Another mother and child would face death together. Luckily, the premature delivery and winter malnourishment meant the baby was small, so Maryam didn’t need a C-section. She gave birth to a healthy baby girl named Talia on May 1st.
For the length of a breath, Maryam was happy. They wanted to reschedule the crossing. Then Israel invaded Rafah and the bombs crept closer and closer. The IDF closed the border. Refugees fled while Maryam’s family grasped what little hope remained.
“I don’t know what to do. We are scheduled to evacuate to Egypt. What if they open the border for a short time and we’re not here? All would be lost.”
“You should leave,” I said.
They did, seeking sanctuary in the seaside town of Al-Mawasi where most of the other refugees had gone. Maryam sent me photos of the beach. The cool blue water and white sand betrayed a war run by the stark raving mad. Explosions dominated the night sky, while the sun scorched the Earth during the day. Fresh food became almost impossible to find.
“Yesterday, we ate an apple,” Maryam exclaimed one day. Even the simplest pleasures had become luxuries.
In early July Maryam’s family moved to the third floor of a warehouse, setting up a tent under the ceiling with money from the GoFundMe.
“I chose to live under this roof,” she told me. “It was a difficult decision. My heart was tired and my children were suffocating in the tent in the summer’s heat.”
Every comfort required money. From garbage collection to the internet. Supplies needed for survival cost ten times what they should. Every one lived under tarps or inside tents. Even the wealthy looked like paupers.
Maryam prayed for relief: “Alhamdulillah, I trust in God that he will never let me down.”
For the rest of the summer and early fall we barely talked. Maryam’s family had enough food and clean water. None of them had been killed in the nightly bombing. No news meant good news. Then October 7, 2024 came around. I couldn’t believe this genocidal war was still going on. I had published half a dozen stories on Palestinians, and all had survived so far. Now, I expected them to start dying. They couldn’t stay safe forever.
Maryam messaged me in November: “The situation is extremely tough. We don’t have enough food. I never imagined we would reach this point.”
Israel was stopping more and more aid trucks from entering Gaza. Medical supplies dwindled. Maryam’s uncle couldn’t get medication for his diabetes and high blood pressure. In December he collapsed and died in the middle of the night. Then another relative was shot by the IDF that month when he went to check on his house in an abandoned part of Gaza. Finally, just before Christmas, Maryam’s friend and her baby were killed by shrapnel from a rocket that landed on a house across the street.
Maryam messaged me on Christmas: “The situation worsens with each passing day, and all I feel around me is fear. I hope this will end before we do.”
I asked Maryam about her college professor to distract her.
“He was my favorite teacher; he always encouraged me,” she said.
Maryam showed me the sweet texts he sent to her from university:
“Where on Earth is Maryam? She is wanted dead or alive!”
“Oh wow! For what?”
“For killing us with her poetry and then running away.”
After reading his Star Wars-esque Gaza Writes Back, a collection of short stories written by his students, I had the feeling he treated all of them that way.
Unfortunately, his kind nature couldn’t save him. The IDF had already killed over thirty members of his extended family by 2021 (They have a long history of going after artists and writers.), and now the Israelis were deliberately targeting the places he sought refuge in. They taunted him in phone calls, saying they knew where he was hiding. They eventually caught up to Refaat at his sister’s apartment, destroying it with a missile on December 6th, 2023. He was forty-four years old.
“After Refaat passed away he became widely known around the world,” Maryam said. “But a year has passed and he still lies buried in the rubble.”
Then, unexpectedly: a ceasefire, a way out. We were shocked. Maryam was so excited she wrote the opening passage to this story and sent it to me with a note to publish it.
A week later, after the ceasefire officially began, Maryam sent me one last message:
We will return to northern Gaza the day after tomorrow. Certainly, all we will find there is rubble and destruction. Everyone will move there and begin setting up tents again, starting from scratch—actually, from less than scratch! Despite that, we long to return; it is our homeland, even if it’s just a pile of stones and sand.
Then, just as I was about to finish this story, I met a Palestinian in my small city who was friends with Maryam’s famous professor. The Fates were at work again.