When the bombs fell, the city screamed louder than sirens. Dust and fire swallowed everything familiar. Somewhere between Al-Shuja’iya and Sabra, an eleven-year-old boy named Mu’min Abu Asheeba lost his leg — and nearly his life. He was declared dead, his father was told to prepare a shroud, and yet, somehow, the boy opened his eyes again. That single breath changed everything.
This is one of those stories that refuses to fade — a fragment of Gaza’s soul told through a child’s voice. The series Gaza Stories has carried many witnesses, from mothers who buried their children to doctors who operated by candlelight. But Mu’min’s voice breaks through with a mix of innocence and strength that few adults could ever hold. His words carry both the weight of destruction and the stubborn light of hope.
The Day the Sky Fell
It was October 12 when the air cracked open. Mu’min’s family had already been displaced once — from Al-Shuja’iyato the Sabra neighborhood. The house that was meant to shelter them became a target.
“We were sitting inside,” he said softly, his eyes lowering. “Suddenly, the bombing came. Just like that.”
No warning. No evacuation order. Just impact. The explosion tore through the walls, and in seconds, the world turned into fire and blood. “My leg was detached completely,” he recalled. “They thought I was a martyr. They told my father to take my shroud.”
But his father refused. “No,” the man insisted. “It’s impossible to shroud him.” And when a doctor passed a small vial of perfume under the child’s nose, Mu’min breathed. That breath became his resurrection. “I woke up as they took me into the operating room,” he said. “They fixed a platinum plate in my leg.”
That moment — between death and survival — became the beginning of everything that followed. It echoed through his story like a second heartbeat. His father’s refusal to give up became the spine of this testimony, a quiet defiance that many Gazan parents have carried.
Stories like this sit beside others — like Lost Over 90 Family Members: Story of Dr. Rinad Al-Majdalawi — each proving how survival itself has turned into a form of resistance.
The Siege and the Silence
After the bombing, Mu’min’s journey led him to Al-Shifa Hospital, the same place where thousands of wounded sought safety and found siege instead. He was trapped there with his father when the Israeli army surrounded the building. “We were afraid, terrified,” he said. “We couldn’t sleep at night.”
He remembered missiles striking close to the hospital walls. He remembered the sound of gunfire, the smell of burnt metal, and his father moving him away from the window each time an explosion came too close. “They told us to go south,” he said. “But there were bodies on the sea road. No one could help them.”
There were no ambulances. No wheelchairs. No safe passage. “My father carried me all the way to the south,” he said. “We would stop to rest, drink water, and then continue.”
The road from Al-Shifa to Khan Younis was lined with horror — silence, smoke, and faces that would never move again. In the chaos, his father called his uncle to come by car, but by then, they had already seen too much.
The boy’s eyes clouded when he spoke about those days. “I was very afraid,” he said. “Really, very afraid.”
The siege of Al-Shifa became a symbol of Gaza’s collapse — a hospital turned into a battlefield, a sanctuary turned into a trap. That memory ties his story to others documented in War Crimes Documentation and Crimes Against Humanity.
Between Hospitals and Hope
From Al-Shifa to the European Hospital in Khan Younis, the journey didn’t get easier. “There is a lot of difficulty in all hospitals,” he said. “It’s not easy there.” Even after the surgery that saved his leg, the struggle continued — infections, missing medicines, and endless waiting for evacuation lists.
He waited four months before his name appeared among the wounded who would leave Gaza. Four months of pain, hunger, and uncertainty. When he finally reached Ankara, Turkey, the doctors there gave him a different kind of attention. “As soon as I entered Turkey,” he said, “they started good treatment for me and fixed my leg.”
The scars are deep — physical and emotional — but Mu’min speaks with a steadiness that feels far older than his eleven years. “I wish to go back to how I was before,” he said. “Not like now, when I’m in hospitals instead of playing.”
Even then, his voice carried gratitude. “I thank God,” he smiled, “because I’m alive.”
His story mirrors countless others — displaced, wounded, and still dreaming. Like those in Gaza’s Missing: Thousands Lost in the Shadow of War, he represents a generation forced to grow up under airstrikes, yet still choosing to imagine a future.
A Father’s Hands
When asked how he reached the south without aid, he said it simply: “My father carried me.”
That sentence, stripped of drama, says everything about the human cost of this war. There were no stretchers, no vehicles, no international corridors — just a father walking through smoke with his son’s broken body in his arms.
They stopped for water. They rested by the road. They kept going.
That image — a father walking through the ruins of Gaza, holding his wounded son — could stand beside any war photograph, yet none would capture the sound of his breath or the heat of his tears.
Mu’min often looked down when speaking of his father. “He protected me,” he said. “He moved me away from the window.” In a world that speaks of numbers and casualties, that single sentence brings everything back to one truth — Gaza’s story isn’t about statistics. It’s about people holding on to each other while the world looks away.
The Child Who Refused to Break
When he was asked about his dreams, Mu’min didn’t hesitate. “I want to become a doctor,” he said. “To treat my country and the injured.”
He mentioned his surgeon — “a doctor named Patohap” — the one who refused to amputate his leg. “He said, ‘No, I don’t want to amputate it. There’s still hope.’” That moment, that defiance, became Mu’min’s new compass.
He still goes for regular hospital check-ups, studies in Turkish schools, and learns a language far from home. Yet his longing stays rooted in Gaza. “I miss my family a lot,” he admitted. “I hope to see them soon.”
When he spoke of the ceasefire, his words were cautious — not the excitement of a child, but the quiet understanding of someone who’s seen how fragile peace can be. “When the ceasefire happened,” he said, “I had hope to see my mother. But then the war resumed. My mother called and asked if we would ever see each other again.”
That phone call still echoes through his memory. A mother’s voice asking a question no child should ever have to hear.
Children of Gaza
“Half of my friends were martyred,” Mu’min said near the end of the interview. “I’ve forgotten their names.”
He paused, the silence heavier than words. “They were all small children, civilians.”
He spoke, too, of his cat — a small, tender image in a landscape of death. “When I went back to my house,” he said, “I found it killed. Its neck was cut off.”
That line, simple and devastating, says more about war than any headline.
His testimony now sits beside others under Eyewitness Testimonies, part of the living archive of Witness Eye. Together, these stories reveal not only the brutality of the attacks but the resilience that follows — the refusal to surrender even when everything burns.
The Question Before the Court
When asked about the International Court of Justice, he nodded slowly. He understood more than most adults would expect. “If I could stand there,” he said, “I would ask them to stop the war. A ceasefire. So our people in Gaza remain well.”
He doesn’t speak of revenge. He speaks of survival, of simple humanity. “Do you think they targeted children deliberately?” the interviewer asked.
“That’s right,” he answered without hesitation.
That single line — delivered by a child whose leg was torn away — holds more weight than any political statement. It belongs to the same truth carried by reports like Crimes Against Humanity and Civilian Impact Reports: the war against Gaza has never been a war of equals.
A Future Waiting to Be Rebuilt
Today, in Ankara, Mu’min walks slowly, his steps uneven but steady. He dreams not of escape, but of return. “I want to go back to Gaza,” he said. “I hope everything will get better.”
The doctors tell him he will need tendon and muscle transplants. He nods. He waits. He studies. He plans to heal others one day — to stand in the same hospitals where he once lay broken and to say, “You will live.”
His story, like every chapter of Gaza Stories, holds the unbearable and the beautiful side by side. It’s not just a child’s testimony. It’s a mirror of Gaza’s endurance — fragile, wounded, and still breathing.
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