An ordinary Friday

I was sitting in my tent, like any ordinary Friday, if there is such a thing as an ordinary day during the genocide. My son Adam was outside playing with a kite. Suddenly, he said to me, “Dad, bullets are landing next to us”. I didn't believe him. I went outside but couldn’t see anything strange. I thought he was imagining things.

I didn't think much of it. I dismissed it as a one-in-a-million coincidence, nothing to fear. I went back to my tent. Suddenly, I heard a striking sound, like someone hitting a wooden table with a hammer. I came out of the bathroom and saw my wife looking frightened.

I was looking around inside the tent to see where the bullet had hit, suddenly it felt like someone struck me in the side with a wooden club, and I heard the same sound again: like someone hitting a wooden table with a hammer. Immediately I knew I’d been hit. My wife was standing right next to me. She screamed loudly. I looked down at my body. My side was covered in blood.

“A bullet landed — right there, on the tent,” she cried out. “Something hit, and the tent shook.”

Since the beginning of the genocide, I have never ignored a sign of danger. If I sensed a threat, even from a kilometre away, I'd take my children away from it, no matter the cost. But this time, I was careless. For the first time since the genocide began, I was careless.

I went outside to confirm if it was really a bullet. That was when I was hit.

“If anything happens and I feel like I'm about to lose consciousness, don't let me pass out. That's the most important thing,” I said to my brother as we drove with my hand on my wound. I called my friend, our colleague Bilal Abu Saada. “I've been shot, I'm on my way to Nasser hospital.”

In my mind, I imagined it was simple. I saw two holes in my side close to each other, meaning the bullet came from the side, went in and out, simple, nothing to fear. But the pain was severe. Very severe.

My brother looked at me and said, “There's blood on your back. Turn around”. I turned, lifted my shirt.

“It's from behind,” he said. “The bullet went in your back.”

All my courage vanished when I realised the bullet had entered from my back and exited through my side. I immediately understood that this was serious, I started thinking about my kidney, my spleen, other organs. I began to feel numbness in my hands, numbness in my face. After a while, my breathing became difficult, and the world started going dark.

My brother was slapping my face, telling me, “Don't fall asleep”.

It was the longest journey of my life, like a road with no end. Even though I've driven it dozens of times, that time it felt endlessly long, full of stops, traffic jams, and obstacles.

After a long journey, with many obstacles, we arrived at the hospital's main north entrance.

Someone was in front of the emergency door, he said, “Get out”. I tried to get out but couldn't, the pain was horrific. 

“I can't get out, I'm wounded,” I told him. 

“There are no stretchers,” he said. “Come on, try, I'll hold you.” 

I wanted to scream, to shout: “What do you want, man? I can't get out!” 

I started trying to get out. Suddenly someone brought a bed from the emergency room. I lay on it, and they wheeled me inside.

I saw the scene you see in movies, the hero lying on his back, being wheeled down a corridor, looking up at the ceiling lights. We reached the x-ray room. They placed my bed next to the x-ray bed and said, “Move onto this bed”. 

I thought they would lift me or help me. Instead, they left me to writhe like a snake, struggling to move from one bed to another by myself, in severe pain. I thought: maybe this is intentional, to keep me active, for health reasons? Aren't they afraid I could have internal bleeding and movement will make it worse?

Then they took me to another place for an ultrasound. I'd never had one before, but I remembered when my wife was pregnant with our first daughter, and the doctor used the same machine to see if the baby was a boy or a girl.

I joked, “Boy or girl?”

The staff member said, “You're wounded and making jokes?”

I told them: “You don’t know me, I make jokes at the worst times.”

I had a CT¹ scan and as soon as it was done, Bilal, the first person I had called, was standing right over me. He said, “Enough of this pampering, get up”. Hearing that warmed my heart. I understood right then that there was no serious danger.

That same night, we went back to our tent. I sat about two metres away from where I was hit. I had imagined I would be terrified to go back to the place where I had almost lost my life. The doctor told me, “You don't need to stay in the hospital at all.” 

I had said at first, “Thank God, I don't want to stay here”. But honestly, I was afraid to go back to my tent. 

Yet, after three hours, here I was, sitting in the same spot as if nothing had happened. The whole experience was surreal; I wouldn't wish it on anyone.