The anguish of Mohammad Abu Al Qumsan, and the death of his four-day-old newborn twins killed in Gaza, is another horror story in a long list of horror stories coming out of the region. With 115 infants both born and killed since the bombing began, we look at the particular devastation of this part of the death toll.
The story of Mohammad Abu Al Qumsan and the death of his four-day old newborn twins in Gaza this week is yet another horror story in a long list of horror stories inflicted upon the region. When Mohammad went to register the birth of his two newborn babies Aysal and Aser on Wednesday, an Israeli strike hit his home, killing his wife, Jumana, and both of his four-day old twins. Now, like so many others in Gaza, Mohammad lives in a world where he has no family left.
It’s been 10 months since the bombing started, so the babies being born now – and their mothers – have known war for the entire pregnancy. According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, 115 infants have been born and killed in Gaza since the invasion began. There is something about this particular sliver of the devastating death toll that is hard to shake; the horror for those mothers being pregnant, giving birth and then having those children be killed that is so unimaginably cruel, it’s hard to believe such a tragedy could be possible.
I keep thinking about how deeply humbling the process of pregnancy is, bringing you right down to your base human needs. I think about what it means to get pregnant and stay pregnant in an environment like Gaza, an environment where you are displaced on daily basis, what the battle of finding a place to sleep and finding enough food to eat must be like, when you’re hauling around a pregnant body and a pregnant appetite. How do you eat for two – or three, in Jumana’s case – when you can barely eat for one? Pregnancy is such an undignified process at the best of times, and a pregnancy in Gaza is surely the worst of times.
There are so many awful stories of murdered and dismembered children but one of the most haunting stories I read recently was from a woman whose family were all still alive but have been left homeless by the war and sleeping on the pavement since May. In this article with The Guardian, she wrote about how hard it was for her to look at her children, sunburned and dirty from living on the streets for so long. The constant skin infections they get from having no clean water. How she used to spoil them with so many presents before the war and how every day is now a battle to find a bathroom to use. So many indignities, even for the mothers of living children.
I think about what Jumana’s birth must have been like, delivering those two tiny twins. We know that many women in Gaza are giving birth without anaesthetic, even for C-sections, due to the endless attacks on hospitals. We know from her post on Facebook that, between their birth and their death, Jumana got a brief window of newborn bliss, posting a photo of her new twins and calling them ‘a miracle’.
I think about what an act of hope it was that Mohammad wanted to get his children registered, to have official proof of their birth in a land that is disintegrating. What it must have taken to do that, to leave your four-day old twins and your postpartum wife, and the kind of faith you must have that there would be enough of a world left that paperwork would be required. In those four days, they would have picked out the names ‘Aysal’ and ‘Aser’ and committed them to the birth certificate process. So much of this is so human, so relatable, that it makes the abrupt ending so much harder to comprehend.
There are no useful words to contribute to any of this. Even if a ceasefire eventually happens, it will not bring back the entire families killed, the generations of loss that Gaza is being forced to endure again. But we write about it for the same reason we look at those photos, we go to the protests, we read about so many dead babies, we watch the videos that show the realities of human anguish when you have lost truly everything in your life.
We write stories like these to wave a flag that if you are also trapped thinking about this father and this mother and her babies, and all the dead children and dead mothers and sons and fathers and brothers and sisters and grandparents and teachers and journalists and doctors, and finding it hard to compute that that is happening right now, still, after so long, then we understand. We just keep watching it happen, because what’s the alternative? Someone has to be left to remember these babies.
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