When Yousef al-Dawi tries to go to sleep in his aunt’s house in Rafah, he thinks about resting his head in his mother’s hands, his father taking him on outings, and most of all, learning to swim with his brother, Mahmoud – taking himself away to a world that no longer exists.
The bomb that fell on his family’s house in Jabaliya at midnight on 23 October killed his whole family and left the 10-year-old pinned under the rubble. It was three days before he regained consciousness in a hospital bed, and his surviving relatives tried to put off breaking the news to him, telling him the rest of his family were in another hospital. Eventually they had to tell him they were all dead.
