"I saw Rushdie choking and all I wanted to do was save him."
Shorouk Ayla, 30, lost her husband on the 15th day of the brutal conflict in the Gaza Strip. While protecting his wife and their 11-month-old daughter, Rushdie was killed in the Israeli army's carpet bombing of peaceful neighborhoods in Gaza. Now their baby girl Danya is two years old and doesn't know what it's like to have a father, she has never tasted chocolate and doesn't remember what life was like before the war - in an apartment rather than a tent. Shorouk, instead of her husband, had to head a Palestinian media company and learn to combine the role of a mom and work in dangerous conditions. About the war in the Gaza Strip through the eyes of a Palestinian journalist - in the exclusive material of "Izvestia".
"Rushdie and I were mentally preparing for a brutal attack on Gaza"
- It was 11 a.m., my husband Rushdie was going to go shoot a report in the emergency room. I suggested he not leave the house that day, but he insisted, "If I don't do it, then who will?" We were having breakfast with my husband and his family when the bombing started, which killed Rushdie," Shoruk Aila recalled.
Shorouk, 30, like many women in the Gaza Strip, lost her husband early. His life ended on the 15th day of the Israel-Hamas conflict - October 22, 2023. Al Arabiya TV reported at the time that Israeli strikes killed at least 400 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and that the night of October 22-23 was the bloodiest since the fighting began. According to the TV channel, the Jabaliya refugee camp and the town of Beit Lahiya in the northern part of the Strip, the Rimal neighborhood of Gaza City, the al-Shati refugee camp, Khan Younis and Rafah were attacked.
It is worth emphasizing that throughout the entire story, my interlocutor almost never mentioned the word "war" in relation to the situation in Gaza, what she calls genocide. For several days we exchanged voice messages in messenger: bad connection prevented us from calling by video.
On Oct. 7, the day Hamas opened fire on towns in southern Israel, Shorouk, Rushdie and their 11-month-old daughter, Danya, were away. For a month and a half, they had to work from Saudi Arabia and Qatar - both are journalists, Rushdie was co-owner of the Palestinian media company Ain Media.
- Rushdie woke me up and told me that Israel would probably retaliate soon. I was happy and proud that our country would finally have a chance to defend the occupied territories, but we were well aware that the response would be brutal: Israel has US support, a strong army, an insane amount of weapons. They have an entire army, and we have only a group of fighters. We're at an uneven playing field. Rushdie and I were mentally preparing for a brutal attack on Gaza," says Shorouk.
The decision to return was made the same day, October 7. If you are a journalist, you are a journalist for life, Shorouk believes. She and her husband realized that if Israel entered an active phase of the war, they both needed to be close to family and friends, and it was equally important to be able to report on the situation in the Gaza Strip to the world. "If I don't work here, I will die slowly, watching all this on TV and doing exactly nothing," Shorouk explains.
Shoruk Ayla
In the early days of the conflict, she worked from home: while he recorded videos in the field, she prepared texts in the rear.
Before the outbreak of hostilities, the young family lived in a high-rise building in Gaza. In October 2023, they decided to move to the Rushdie family's private home: it was not safe to stay in the top-floor apartment during the bombings. Now Shorouk is no longer sure if she will ever have the opportunity to return there. In 14 months, the IDF has leveled about two-thirds of the buildings in Gaza, regular attacks on residential buildings continue to this day.
On the day Rushdie died, Israel carpet-bombed the neighborhood where his parents lived. The family hurriedly left their breakfast and began to descend to the basement.
- My right hand held his left hand, in my left hand was our daughter Danya, she was not yet walking. Two seconds later he was suddenly across from me and I put my hand on his shoulder. I asked him why he was doing that. I tried to move him behind me again, but then there was an attack and everything around me was covered in dust," Shoruk continues.
Next, she lost her hearing for a while, the explosion made her ears pop. She felt her blood sugar and blood pressure drop dramatically. Then Shoruk smelled gunpowder, but through the dust she couldn't see what was going on around her. By feel, she found her daughter and made sure the girl was moving. As she continued to search the space, she could not find her husband. But suddenly, abruptly, she felt a weight on her legs. Shoruk immediately switched on the flashlight on her phone and realized that Rushdie's body was there.
- I started digging out his body from the pile of cement when I realized that he wasn't moving at all. I thought he might have fallen into a coma. Together with his brothers, we decided to carry him to the hospital. The ambulance said it couldn't come to our neighborhood because of the bombing. We walked for 15 minutes, something exploded around us every now and then. But I didn't care, I saw that Rushdie was suffocating and all I wanted to do was to save him. He died five minutes after we reached the hospital," says Shoruk in an already calm voice.
"She is trying so hard to understand what it means to have a father"
"Habibi Rushdie, it's been a year since your death. A year in which the gardens of my heart were completely scorched. It's been a year since our little girl Danya is trying to understand what it means to have a baba (daddy. - Izvestia)," Shoruk writes on October 22, 2024 on her social media.
- My daughter does not remember her father. She sees many children around her and sees that they have dads. She is trying so hard to understand what it means to have a father. She tries to call every man "baba" because she thinks man means baba. This is something I can't explain to her. I can't tell her that her father is in heaven, she won't understand," she says.
Over the year, the woman has had to learn to combine the roles of mom and journalist working under extreme conditions. Now she, rather than her husband, takes to the dilapidated streets of Gaza almost every day to report on events. After her husband's death, Shorouk took over Ain Media.
Shoruk Ayla and her daughter Danya.
- As a woman, a journalist and a mother, I often feel weak. I am not only responsible for myself. Sometimes when I'm reporting in a danger zone, I take a step back because of my daughter because I don't want her to lose me too. When I am not with her, I am constantly checking to see if anything has happened in the area where she is," she notes.
To continue working, Shoruk has to walk from the tent where she and her family live to the hospital where the press tent is located. Only there is internet to publish stories and electricity to charge her phone and equipment. About her life in the tent, Shoruk says, "It's a nightmare. It's just a piece of cloth that doesn't protect you 100% from the sun and heat or cold, and even worse from attacks and shelling."
There is an energy and fuel crisis in Gaza. There is virtually no gasoline in the Strip. Cargo is transported on carts driven by donkeys or horses. Some buses run on vegetable oil for cooking. Because of their small numbers, they run completely clogged. Electricity can only be generated by solar panels, making the process more difficult in winter.
Access to food is also a big problem. According to the latest data, since October 6, 2024, Israel has rejected more than 100 UN requests to deliver humanitarian aid to northern Gaza. At the same time, according to media reports, the Jewish state is seeking to improve the humanitarian situation in the Strip after US threats to cut off arms deliveries.
- We are in conditions of hunger. We have no bread, no flour to bake anything, many children are malnourished and dying from it. My daughter is two years old and she doesn't know what a supermarket is - there is simply nothing to buy in them now. She doesn't know what chocolate is or what baby snacks are - she's never tasted it," Shorouk said.
There is nothing in Gaza now that can remind you of a time of peace, even if only for a moment, to enjoy life. There is usually not even instant coffee on the market, and if it or other "pleasure" products appear, they cost many times more than they did before the war.
Shorouk says that neither she nor her entourage were prepared for this level of brutality from the Israeli army. "The aggression is beyond humanity," she says. However, despite all the difficulties and pressure from family and friends, throughout the fighting, Shorouk never once considered leaving Gaza.
Shoruk Ayla
She now lives in the south, while Rushdie's grave is in the north. Shorouk, like many others, is unable to travel from one part of the Gaza Strip to another. She feels guilty that she cannot be near her husband. For her, leaving for another country is comparable to betrayal.
She is only two years old, but the loss of her father will be a lifelong and irreparable loss.
Shoruk Ayla's courage and strength was recognized in 2024 with an award from the Committee to Protect Journalists, an international non-governmental organization. Shoruk continues to report honestly on what is happening in her country despite the threat to her life. According to the committee, by December 20, 141 journalists and media workers had been killed, 49 wounded, two missing and 75 arrested in Gaza. Overall, according to the Ministry of Health of the Strip, since last October the number of victims of Israeli actions here exceeds 45.3 thousand, more than 107.7 thousand people were injured.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
