The Dutch surgeon Salih El Saddy returned on Saturday after working in Gaza for a month. He tells NU.nl about hungry children, the constant buzzing of drones, and the smell of charred bodies. “When a mother loses a child, you feel it.”
In the morning, El Saddy took his car to the garage. After the interview, he will walk his dog. These are everyday things, but for El Saddy, they couldn’t be further removed from his life in the past month. He spent it in the Al Shifa hospital, in the heavily bombed northern Gaza Strip.
What struck El Saddy most upon his return to the Netherlands? The silence. “Suddenly, the background noise of drones, explosions, and gunshots was gone,” he says. “That felt unnatural.”
At Schiphol Airport, he received a warm welcome, as many supporters had come to the airport to thank El Saddy for his work. But it was difficult to enjoy the barbecue that friends and family had organized for him. “It felt very surreal. I couldn’t enjoy the food that was on the table.”
At the end of April, El Saddy eventually entered Gaza via Jordan and a heavily secured bus ride through Israel. The bus received a police escort due to the threat of Israeli right-wing extremists. They do not want aid to take place in Gaza. The trip was organized through COGAT, a department within the Israeli Ministry of Defense. It is the only way to enter Gaza.
Armored cars from the United Nations then took El Saddy from the border with Gaza to the Al Shifa hospital. He traveled with an Australian and a Jordanian doctor and an Irish nurse. “What you see then is incomprehensible,” he says about those first impressions.
“The contrast with the world outside Gaza is so great. You see total destruction.” On the way to the hospital, El Saddy saw dirty children without shoes, people with horse and cart, and endless tent camps.
The surgeon and general practitioner in training had already made the decision a few months ago to go to Gaza. “I could no longer accept the situation,” he says. “It was getting worse and worse, and the international community looked away. I am one of the few orthopedic surgeons (who perform operations on bones, muscles, and joints, ed.). I thought: if I don’t do it, who will?”
In the hospital, El Saddy was confronted with the consequences of the Israeli warfare in Gaza. According to him, no one can prepare for that from a distance. “All impressions come in hard,” says the doctor.
“It’s different when you actually hear the screaming in the emergency room. You smell burned and charred bodies. When a mother has lost a child, you not only hear it in the screaming, but you also feel it,” the surgeon sighs. “When you look at images on your phone, you experience that much less.”
El Saddy finds it difficult when he thinks back to the children who ended up on his operating table and had lost their parents. “They look numb and apathetic at you. You then perform an operation, completely focused. Afterwards, the realization only dawns. Those are the most intense moments. You suddenly realize what awaits such a child. Such a child was under the rubble, lost his parents, saw corridors full of bloodied bodies, and is, in short, traumatized.”
El Saddy and his colleagues worked with the materials that were available. Some of that came from collapsed parts of the hospital. With that, a few remaining rooms have been set up that must pass for operating rooms. Doctor’s coats instead of sterile blankets are used to cover patients. To repair fractures, patients often get pins and bolts in the wrong size, because that is the only available.
After bombardments, wounded people kept pouring into the hospital. But El Saddy recently also had to treat Gazans who had clashed with each other. Often that was about food. Due to a lack of it, residents are desperate. Local colleagues in the hospital sometimes lost as much as 30 kilos since the beginning of the war.
“You hear that people eat rabbit food. You see children who are emaciated,” says El Saddy. Only those with a lot of money can still buy some bread here and there. The doctor himself was allowed to take 3 kilos of food for a whole month. “But when I was hungry and wanted to take something out of my bag, I felt guilty towards the children. Then I usually shared it.” That is why he only ate the daily portions of rice from the hospital.
In mid-May, hospital staff heard through the grapevine that an attack on the hospital would take place and had to retreat to a safehouse. They stayed there for four days. “They bombed our entire neighborhood flat,” says the doctor.
“For nights on end, and in the morning too. When you sit in such a safehouse, you feel the ground shake and the walls tremble. The front and back doors were open so that the windows would not shatter. You smell the gunpowder of an explosion.” His faith kept him going at those moments. “It states that everything is written and I cannot change anything, that gave a feeling of resignation.”
After the bombing, the doctor could return to the hospital. But he never saw some patients who were there before and also had to leave again.
A 43-year-old woman who was pulled from the rubble with a shattered elbow is one of the patients who will stay with him. “The woman asked me at one point to treat her as if I were her mother, that touched me very much.”
El Saddy managed to fix her arm so that the elbow could heal. “After that I spoke to her every day,” he says. “We exchanged numbers and now she sends me messages every day about how she is doing. You suddenly create a very strong bond with each other.”
During his stay, El Saddy was very active on Instagram, where more and more followers watched his stories. Once home, he feels a responsibility to continue to tell about Gaza.
It strengthens him that people are increasingly daring to speak critically about what is happening there. “You don’t have to give your opinion very extremist. You only have to show your human side: look, disapprove and speak out. It is not more than that.”
It will take a while before El Saddy can resume his normal life in the Netherlands. He is currently still living in what he calls “Gaza rhythm”. He only falls asleep around 7:00 AM every morning.
“My body has to adapt,” he says. That was also the case when he arrived in Gaza. “You pay attention to every little bang or drone that flies just above your head. A week later you don’t do that anymore. You mentally need the time to adjust again. But that will be alright again.”