‘I am living with this voice in my head ‘Save me, save me’

Sherín Alsabbagh cannot get the anguished and terrified words of her mother out of her head.

“She is saying ‘I am hungry, save me’,” Ms Alsabbagh, an English tutor and translator living and working in Ballaghaderreen, told the Herald recently. She is a Palestinian and Irish citizen and has been watching with horror the aftermath of the Israeli invasion of Gaza. Sherín has lived in Ireland for 15 years.

Her mother Najwa, aged 73, is unwell, frail and has lost her home.

“She and my father worked hard to make us a nice home,” she said. “When I talk to her she says ‘Save me please. I am hungry’, I can’t live with that. My seven year old niece is trying to hide the fact that she is hungry and sick because she doesn’t want me to worry.” Najwa along with Sherín's brother Mohammed, his wife Doaa, and their four children, Abed Elkareem, Ritaj, little Najwa and Salsabeel are currently trapped in Gaza. Her father passed away four years ago.

Her mother is a retired teacher. Her brother is an accountant and his wife is a geologist. Their children are aged between six and 17; the eldest had just started college in Gaza city when the invasion began. They have been completely displaced, sleeping in bomb damaged buildings and sleeping on the floor in Al Shifa hospital in the north of Gaza. They are now on the streets, trying to find shelter.

They were ordered to leave their home in Gaza City, near Al Shifa hospital, in October.

“I don’t call this a war because it is not equal,” she said.

Her family travelled South to Rafah. But after this area was bombed too, they went back to the East of Gaza, which they then had to flee. Nowhere in Gaza is safe, Sherín explained.

“You are talking about an elderly woman here, she has problems with her knees and her back. When my family were ordered to move by the Israeli army, it was not an organised operation. It’s chaos, people are running in the street for their life. It’s full of horror. The road is full of unburied bodies,” said Sherín. “The buildings are still collapsing from the bombardment. They can’t even take shelter if it’s raining because they don’t know if the building is safe. I don’t want you to think that there are people telling them where to go and guiding them to where it is safe. There are waves of people of all ages, running in the streets for their lives. You can imagine what Gazans have to go through before they get to a place. I don’t want to call it a safe place because nowhere is safe.” For the last three months, people of Gaza have been suffering unimaginably. For Sherín what her family is going through is almost indescribable.

“I have not spoken to them in recent days but my sister who is in Sweden, has. You keep trying and trying but the communications are very poor. It is really frustrating,” she said.

While they do not want to leave Gaza, they want to live in peace. They are in immediate danger from bombs, bullets, and snipers, as well as disease and deprivation.

They are now almost starving, forced to eat animal meal and have no clean water to drink or wash, Sherín told this paper.

“My nieces when they drink the water, they get sick. They vomit and they get dehydrated. The food that they are eating, if there is any, is making them sick, but they are eating it because they have to. The body cannot digest it because the food is not suitable for human consumption. Safety is gone, hygiene is gone, there is no proper food. There is only one bathroom. A thousand people, some of whom are sick, using one bathroom.” She said that recently her family went back to their home, which is close by, for extra blankets and found it severely damaged.

“There are big holes in the roof and walls. They got stuck in the house, as there were tanks outside the house. They had to turn off the mobile phones, turn off the lights. They asked the kids, six and seven, to be quiet because if the soldiers heard any noise, they would shoot.” She is very worried about how seeing and living through these experiences is effecting the children.

“It’s unimaginable. I can’t imagine it myself. On the phone, I could hear the bombardment. My niece told me ‘I love you. I am afraid’. I want to save them, I want to do something for them. And I can’t and I feel it is my responsibility. They stayed in that house the whole night. No blankets underneath them and it was so cold.” A GoFundMe page to help Sherín was set up by her friend, artist Jessamine O'Connor, and it has already raised thousands of euro, more than €20,500 of a €70,000 target.

“People are so generous,” she said. “It is so amazing. I felt I was flying. When I told my family – my late father always told me the similarities between Irish and Palestinian history – I heard the hope and joy in their voice. It gave them hope to live. The support I have been given is beyond words.” Sherín is pleading with the department of foreign affairs to help her family get out of Gaza, similar to what other countries, such as Spain, are doing. She added that the number of Gazans with Irish citizenship is small, and their families would not constitute a large number of people.

“I am trying to protect my family,” Sherín said. “I am begging the Irish Government to help me, to help me feed my mother. This woman has been through awful things since October, how long do you think she is going to live? I am living with this voice in my head ‘Save me, save me’.” To donate to the GoFundMe campaign, please visit ‘Help Sherín's family escape from Gaza’.