KHAN YOUNIS — My brother Suhail was a loving person, and we were very close. He treated me like his son, following my late father’s will. We would discuss our sorrows and stick together in the darkest times. The Israel-Hamas war has been difficult.
In the first days of the war, we moved from house to house in search of shelter from Israeli bombs. As the bombardments intensified, the Israeli ministry ordered residents in our area of the Khan Younis camp to leave. Suhail, his family and I moved to the city of Rafah and built a tent.
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As displaced people, we have lived through poverty, starvation, insecurity, the winter cold and the summer heat. Everyday, we went out in search of food, a small portion of which reached the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).
Suhail did not accept living as a displaced person and the humiliation of living in tents; he wanted to return home to Khan Younis. But I told him that it was too risky because the area was being heavily bombed, he reluctantly agreed and stayed in the tent.
He was later overjoyed when he heard on the radio that the Israeli military had withdrawal from Khan Younis after concluding its ground operations, saying “Now we can return to our homes and demolish the tents." And he returned to Khan Younis, the city where he grew up and that he knew by heart.
No news
Communication was difficult, but over the phone Suhail urged us to leave the tents and return to the house. Only one room and a bathroom remained of his home, and he had begun to clear away the rubble.
That night felt like a hundred years.
He lived there alone for about 10 days before, one difficult night, we heard the sounds of explosions in Khan Younis. Still sheltering in Rafah, about three kilometers south of Khan Younis, we became anxious and concerned about Suhail. We tried calling him, but his phone was off.
That night felt like a hundred years. At dawn, my brother Mahmoud, my sister Ahlam and I went to Khan Younis. We were unable to enter the city due to the intensity of the bombing, so we stood at the western entrance to the city to ask everyone who was leaving about Suhail.
After 14 hours, no one was able to give us any information and a sense of doom began to creep into our hearts. Ahlam and Mahmoud returned to Rafah, and I stayed in a relative’s tent in Khan Younis. I returned every day to the entrance, posted on social media and WhatsApp groups, but received no news about him.
The price of return
On April 7 — 20 days after we lost contact with our brother — the Israeli military announced its complete withdrawal from Khan Younis. We all ran to his house, and we were relieved to see that he had not been bombed inside his house. We thought that he had been detained by the Israeli military.
Then, on the afternoon of April 9, I received a call from my friend telling me: “Mohamed, I found the ID of your brother Suhail on top of a dead body with the civil defense. Go quickly to Abu Youssef al-Najjar Hospital [in Rafah].”
I rushed to the hospital. There were many bodies, and I began searching for the names written on the nylon body bags. I found my brother's name and his ID.
I was shocked. I asked the doctor to see the body and identify it, but he refused because it was too decomposed.
I called my family to tell them that Suhail’s body had been found, and we decided to bury him in the family’s cemetery in Khan Younis. But we had trouble finding a way to transport my brother’s body, as the journey would take more than an hour amid the rubble and the relentless bombing. We were afraid that night would fall, and it would not be possible to bury my brother in the cemetery. Finally, we resorted to a tuk-tuk (a three-wheeled auto rickshaw).
In Khan Younis, we found destruction everywhere. We entered the cemetery with a few relatives. We prayed for him. And we honored my brother by burying his body.