A year ago, an Israeli airstrike buried me alive. I’m still clawing my way out
A toy amid the rubble of the author’s destroyed home, 7 December 2023
Mohammed R. Mhawish writes in +972 on 10 December 2024:
At around 7:30 a.m. on the morning of December 7, 2023, my son’s tiny footsteps echoed down the hallway as I reached for my cup of tea. After a week away from home reporting on Israel’s onslaught on the Gaza Strip, which was then entering its second month, I had returned the previous night to be with my family. I was trying to create a sense of calm within our walls, away from the chaos and terror outside. It lasted only seconds.
What happened next was like nothing I had ever heard: a tearing, howling explosion that destroyed everything around me in an instant. I didn’t see the ceiling crack or the walls crumble; I only felt the sudden, crushing weight as the world collapsed on top of me. It wasn’t like falling, but rather being smothered into the earth. My body folded awkwardly beneath the debris — arms pinned, legs trapped, ribs crushed against sharp concrete.
I tried to scream, but the noise came out as a choking rasp, swallowed up by the darkness. My chest burned from the effort, but I screamed again anyway, calling out for my wife, Asmaa, my 3-year-old son, Rafik, and my parents. Their names ricocheted inside my skull as the layers of cement pressed down harder.
Then came the smell: scorched concrete, metallic blood, something acrid I couldn’t place. I shifted my hand, scraping it against broken glass, and tried to feel for anything alive in the void around me. My fingertips found rubble, sharp and cold. Beneath it, nothing.