Ansam al Ruhal: "In Gaza, nurses also have to be mothers and doctors"

BarcelonaAnsam al Ruhal (Beit Lahia, Gaza Strip, 1999) was until two months ago a nurse at the Indonesian Hospital, one of the few medical centers still operational in northern Gaza, amidst the relentless Israeli offensive on the ground. She arrived in Barcelona in June, welcomed by the refugee student program at the University of Barcelona (UB). She is 27 years old and has survived five wars. As a child, she was injured in an Israeli attack that killed two of her sisters.

You are from Beit Lahia, in northern Gaza, one of the areas most devastated by the Israeli army.

— Beit Lahia is one of the first cities they destroyed, because we are on the border of Gaza. It is completely destroyed and is now in the red zone, occupied by the Israeli army. Everything is destroyed, they have taken our land and perhaps we will not be able to return. At the Indonesian Hospital we worked without electricity, with very few resources and almost no medicine. A patient would arrive and you couldn't even give them a painkiller. Suddenly more than a hundred injured people arrived at once. There were patients on the floor, in beds, and you didn't know what to do or who was a priority. People were screaming: "My son!", "My mother!"

Under these conditions, not everyone can be attended to. How did they triage?

— The most difficult thing was that when a patient was in a very serious condition, we had to let them die, because we couldn't spend the few resources we had on very difficult cases. We concentrated on cases that had a chance of survival. If someone needed to be operated on and we didn't have electricity, we tried to refer them to other hospitals, but it was also very dangerous, because the Israelis were bombing ambulances. Once I accompanied three patients to Al-Shifa Hospital amidst bombings. When we arrived, they told us they couldn't take care of them and sent us back north. There are some patients I don't think I will ever forget. Like four girls from the same family who had suffered amputations. When the doctor saw them, he started crying. He told me: "Ansam, if I operate on these girls, it will be the twenty-fifth operation on amputee women I've done these days." One of them was in her last month of pregnancy. When I saw her, I thought: "How will she be able to breastfeed without arms?"

When I was in the hospital, did you witness any Israeli army attacks?

— I was working for 48 consecutive days at the Indonesian Hospital without seeing my family, who were displaced in a UN school. When we heard that there would be the first ceasefire, everyone at the hospital was very happy. But only a few hours later the Israeli soldiers arrived and surrounded us on all sides. They entered and killed a patient, saying he was from Hamas. He was a relative of mine, and I know it wasn't true. They attacked us almost every night. For many days we were under siege by the army.

In such circumstances, she had to work far beyond her training as a nurse.

— In a genocide, you can't just work as a nurse. You also have to be a mother, a sister, a wife. There were patients who had no one and they told me: "Please, don't leave me alone. Come ask me how I am, take care of me." And I felt they were my family. I also had to be a doctor, because we had very little staff. When many wounded arrived at the same time, some with head trauma, I myself performed sutures. The doctors told me: "Ansam, you did a good job." And I felt proud. Sometimes my heart broke, but I had to be strong. When many wounded arrive at the same time, you do many things, very quickly, and you don't even know how you do them, because there is no time. At that moment the patient depends on you. If you know how to help them, they survive. If not, they die.

Could she have fled with her family to the south of the Strip, where there were also bombings, but they were less intense. Why did she decide to stay in the north of Gaza?

— I didn't study nursing for myself, but for my community, my family, and my friends, to help vulnerable people. I saw how healthcare workers were murdered or taken away arrested. And I thought: "Maybe my father or a friend of mine has to come to the hospital and they won't find anyone to take care of them." How could I leave my family alone at that moment? I had studied nursing for four years, and just when my people needed me, I had to leave? It's true that I was very tired, exhausted, and depressed. But at the end of the day, I told myself: "I have helped many people, I am still a human being."

You who are in contact with your family, friends, and colleagues in Gaza, how would you explain the current situation?

— The media only show a small part of what is happening and what people in Gaza are feeling. Last week I spoke with my mother and she told me that the Israeli army attacks anywhere and at any time. When my brothers call me, they cry because it is very hot in the tent. They tell me they live in hell and want to die. That the people who have been killed so far were saved from a long agony. The tent in summer is an oven and in winter a refrigerator. The lives of the people of Gaza are limited to getting water and food: education and development have been erased. We Palestinians know that knowledge is the key to resistance. And now we have a land without universities, schools, hospitals, or houses. I don't recognize it.

It must have been difficult to adapt to life in Barcelona.

— When I arrived in Barcelona and saw the outside world, I was very surprised. Here people have everything, while in Gaza they have nothing. I was surprised and sad at the same time. I felt guilty for having abandoned my family. But I am comforted by the support of the people here for the Palestinian people. Now I have set myself the goal of continuing to study, pursuing my dream, and making my family, my community, proud of me.