Every morning, Alaa al-Nimer wakes up to bathe her six-month-old daughter, Nimah. There is no running water – there hasn’t been for many months – and the water she uses sparingly is collected from distribution points close to a relative’s house in Gaza City’s northern Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood. Despite the hardships Alaa and her family now endure, she is determined to treat her green-eyed daughter to a daily bath.
The 34-year-old mother of three says her daughter’s smile is a “balm for her soul” during a time of “darkness”.
But her birth was more traumatic than Alaa could ever have anticipated.
“My baby girl was born on the street,” she explains shyly.
She describes it as the most difficult day of her life.
Displaced more than 11 times
Alaa and her family – her husband, Abdullah, 36, and their sons, Mohanned, seven, and Yamen, five – have been on the move almost since Israel’s war on Gaza began in October.
After Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel on October 7, in which 1,139 people were killed, Israel has launched a war on Gaza that has killed more than 39,000 people.
When their home in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighbourhood was targeted in October, the family first moved to a relative’s home and then to neighbours’ homes.
“[We were] displaced more than 11 times,” Alaa says with a tired voice.
Her family had decided to remain in northern Gaza despite Israeli forces instructing people to move south.
“It was a matter of principle,” Alaa says. “We realised that no place was safe.”
On one occasion, Israeli tanks surrounded the building they were staying in and opened fire. Alaa, her sons and about 25 other people who were inside escaped through an opening created when a shell struck the building earlier in the war. She describes their escape as “miraculous”.
But it was the middle of winter and Alaa was eight months pregnant. She walked eastward for four hours in the cold with her children to escape the tanks. At the time, her husband was elsewhere with his elderly mother, who has difficulty walking. Alaa, her sons and the people from the building took detours to reach the Old City, where they sheltered in a shop near a mosque until it was safe to return.
‘Please, is there anyone?’
Alaa desperately hoped the war would end before she was due to give birth. “I never imagined going into labour during the war,” she says.
She was at her sister-in-law’s house when she first started to feel labour pains. “I tried to lie to myself,” she says, by insisting she wasn’t about to give birth. But the pain grew worse.
It was after 10pm on a wet, cold January night, and Alaa could hear the sounds of Israeli bombs landing nearby.
She called her mother and sister who were staying nearby while her husband went to look for a car to take her to the hospital. Alaa waited on the street. Her labour progressed quickly, but due to the lack of fuel and the late hour, Abdullah couldn’t find a car, and the communication networks were too weak to call for an ambulance.
Alaa stood on the side of the street, screaming for help. She remembers praying and thinking: “Please, God, not now. I want to be in the hospital.” She was terrified for her baby’s life.
But by the time her husband returned, she was already giving birth. Her mother and sister also arrived, running to her in shock. Abdullah caught his daughter’s head in his hands and shouted out for scissors to cut the umbilical cord, which her cousin who arrived with Alaa’s brother brought out from a medical kit.
Desperate to find medical care for his wife and newborn daughter, Abdullah eventually managed to find a car to take them to a maternity hospital 5.5km (3.4 miles) away. Alaa climbed in with her baby and her mother while her husband and brother ran ahead of them.
But the car stopped after just a few metres. It had run out of fuel.
“The street around me was completely dark. There was no one in sight,” Alaa recalls.
“My cousin carried the baby girl, wrapping her in his coat against the cold, and walked quickly in front of us, fearing for her life. He guided us with the flashlight on his mobile phone, saying, ‘Turn right, then left’ to guide us.”
Alaa was bleeding. Her mother and sister walked alongside her, crying.
“My mother walked in the middle of the street, screaming, ‘Please, is there anyone? Is there any car to take us? Please, we have a newborn baby girl and her mother just gave birth.’
“But there was no answer.”
They walked for about an hour before they found a minibus to take them the short remaining distance to the hospital.
“We got into the car, crying with both joy and fear,” Alaa says.
At the door to the hospital, a doctor was waiting, informed by Alaa’s husband and his brother who had arrived before them.
“The doctor took me in her arms and immediately took me to the maternity ward,” Alaa recalls.
A healthy baby and a spoon of halwa
When she woke the next morning and the doctors told her her daughter was doing well, Alaa says her “happiness was indescribable”.
“I believe God was with me,” Alaa reflects.
Amid the joy of learning that her daughter had survived the harrowing birth, Alaa recalls a small moment when a cousin offered her a cup of fresh orange juice squeezed from an orange she had picked from some nearby land and kept hidden.
“It was the first and last time I had fresh juice during the war,” she says.
Then there was the small box of halwa her husband had put in her birth bag.
“Every day before I gave birth, I checked the bag to make sure it was still there,” she recalls.
That day she took a deep breath before savouring the first spoonful. “I had forgotten what it tasted like during the war,” she says.
Six months have passed since then, and Nimah is healthy. Alaa continues to breastfeed due to the lack of baby formula and food, even as she herself is unable to eat properly, given the food shortages.
Nimah has begun to laugh and coo, and everyone in the house in Sheikh Radwan adores her. But her mother is sad that she was born and is growing up in such difficult circumstances.
Alaa’s family has felt the full force of this war. Her children must survive on a quarter of a loaf of bread each day, and the family mourns Alaa’s 26-year-old brother, also named Alaa, whose body was found near their bombed-out house at the end of December.
“My child was born from the heart of death,” Alaa says. “But since that day, hope has not left my heart.”
