Doha: Abu Hasira, 19, never imagined that her journey back to Gaza would be paved with shrapnel and pain, nor that her longing for her father and the street of her childhood would turn into yet another tragedy added to a long list of suffering, displacement, and sorrow.
According to Yemen News Agency, her story began the day she and her family were forced to flee from the heart of Gaza to the south, searching for a safe refuge amid the fire of a criminal enemy that knows no language other than extermination and starvation.
Like all residents of the besieged strip who were torn apart by the brutal Israeli aggression, Doha left everything behind-her house, her school, her father, one of her brothers-and fled with her mother and three sisters.
She told Palestine newspaper: 'Every step of displacement was stealing something from me. We left hoping to reunite with my father and brother soon, but their absence grew longer, and worry became our constant companion.'
The family was displaced repeatedly-from Al-Maghazi to Al-Zawaida, then to Deir al-Balah-before finally settling in a tent that shields them neither from the scorching summer nor the bitter cold of winter.
Doha describes the life of displacement, fleeing from the death sown by the Israeli occupation across every corner of the strip: 'The tent became our house, salty water our drink, and the air, heavy with the smell of gunpowder, mingled with our breaths.'
Bearing the weight of the family alongside her mother, she says that despite all the hunger, fear, exhaustion, and uprooting, the hardest days were yet to come.
While journeying with her family toward Wadi Gaza, something fell beside them.
She was struck by shrapnel in the head, shoulder, pelvis, and face. She was rushed to Al-Awda Hospital, then to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, where a new chapter of suffering began.
Two days later, she underwent a grueling surgery: the amputation of fingers from her right hand, skin grafts from her thigh in an attempt to save what was left of her hand, and three months of hospitalization under severe shortages of medical supplies, care, and medicine-where survival itself became a miracle.
Today, Doha looks at her right hand, knowing that combing her hair or tying a scarf around her head has become a daily challenge-just like the thousands of boys, girls, and children of Gaza whose dreams were 'amputated' along with their limbs by a ruthless enemy that thrives on killing, starvation, and extermination.