Wijdan Abu Matar, 43, had to depart Gaza in November 2023 along with her eight children to receive medical care, while her wounded husband, Hatem, stayed behind.

The family lived in the Nuseirat refugee camp when the Gaza conflict started after the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel. Ten days later, on 17 October that year, an Israeli strike hit the al-Muhandseen tower near their residence, wounding Wijdan and all her relatives.

“We were sitting together, about to begin lunch when the bombing struck,” Wijdan remembered. “The ceiling fell on us. Everything turned dark. I could not see a thing. I just began calling out the names of my sons and daughters.”

Her daughter Nour, 15, endured the gravest wounds, including a fractured skull and brain bleeding. Five-year-old Amna received severe burns to her chest. The family was split apart right after the strike.

Nour remained in intensive care for roughly 33 days, with Wijdan at her side. Amna and Aysel, three and a half, stayed at another hospital for 15 days.

On 30 November 2023, Wijdan traveled with Nour to a hospital in Egypt for treatment. For months the relatives stayed dispersed across Egypt, getting medical help and living with other family members.

“I felt utterly powerless,” Wijdan said. “There was a fire in my heart because I was separated from my husband and my family was spread out.”

Eventually Wijdan gathered her children in an apartment in Egypt. Three years later she remains apart from her husband, who is still in Gaza. “I have become both the mother and the father to my children,” she said. “The responsibility wears me down, and I worry constantly about my husband.”

Hatem suffered a serious leg injury that restricts his movement and is now displaced in a tent in Nuseirat. Even talking to him proves difficult because of Gaza’s unstable internet. “When he manages to connect, he calls me and the children. He tells me, ‘I am counting the days until I can see you again.’ I can see the tears in his eyes,” Wijdan says.

Wijdan has no steady income and depends on donations. Hatem stopped receiving pay 10 months ago and his injury stops him from working.

In Egypt, life is hard for Wijdan and her family. She says she cannot afford transport to send five of her children to school. “I see my children’s future slipping away before me, and there is nothing I can do.”

Nour still needs medical care, but Wijdan often cannot pay for her medicine. She sometimes thinks of returning to Gaza to join Hatem, yet fears exposing her children to more hardship.

“I dream of getting my children the treatment they need, and I hope we can reunite with my husband soon so he can also receive care,” Wijdan said. “I cannot carry all of this alone. Psychologically, I am drained. I have lost 35 members of my family in this war.”

Since the war began with Hamas’s attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people, at least 73,783 Palestinians have been killed and 174,738 wounded, according to the health ministry. Earlier this year an independent UN inquiry found that Israel continues to commit genocide by deliberately targeting Palestinian children in Gaza.

Sami Abu Tabaq, a 29-year-old Palestinian photojournalist, was forced to leave the Gaza Strip in April 2024, leaving behind his family and his fiancee, Ola.

“Loneliness kills me every day,” he said. “Life away from the woman I love and my family is incredibly hard. I’m desperately waiting for the day God brings us together again.”

Sami became engaged to Ola five months before the war began. They met by chance when he chose her family’s home as a location for a photoshoot. Before the war, they saw each other constantly. They went to the sea, had dinner at restaurants in Gaza, and spent months preparing the house where they planned to live after their wedding, which was scheduled for November 2023.

Sami and his family fled their home in Tal al-Zaatar, Jabaliya, early in the war. Their home was badly damaged and later destroyed, along with the house Sami and Ola had been planning to move into once they got married.

When his sister decided to flee south with her children, Sami accompanied her but he could not reach Ola to say goodbye.

The separation became unbearable. Days, sometimes weeks, passed without Sami knowing whether Ola was alive. Once, he saw reports that an entire residential block near her home in Gaza City had been bombed. “I almost lost my mind. I had never felt so helpless,” he said. Unable to return north, he asked his brother to check on her. Eventually, his brother confirmed that she and her family were alive.

Sami continued working as a photojournalist from southern Gaza. Four journalists who had shared his tent were later killed, including Hamza al-Dahdouh, a son of the Al Jazeera journalist Wael al-Dahdouh.

As Israel threatened a ground invasion of Rafah in 2024, Ola began urging Sami to leave Gaza, fearing he would be killed. Sami paid a company coordinating exits at the time for both of them to cross into Egypt. But Ola could not reach southern Gaza to travel through Rafah. “She told me, ‘You go, and I’ll follow you,’” Sami said. “And here we are, still waiting, nearly two and a half years later.” They still have not managed to get married.

By his second day in Egypt, Sami was overwhelmed by guilt. “The overthinking kills me,” he said. “I felt ashamed to turn on the lights or eat proper food while my fiancee and my family were struggling to find the most basic things.”

In Egypt, his life has become dominated by loneliness and sleeplessness. “There is safety in Egypt and there are beautiful places, but I stay home. Happiness has no meaning without her. I cannot enjoy anything while she is not here,” he said.

Despite the war, Ola completed her bachelor’s degree in nursing at the Islamic University of Gaza. She has also endured enormous loss: her cousin, the journalist Ayat Khadoura, was killed, along with about 50 other members of her extended family.

From Egypt, Sami tries to create moments of happiness for her. For her latest birthday, he contacted her brother in Gaza and secretly arranged a cake, gift and flowers. “When she woke up and saw everything, she was so happy. I love her reaction when she’s happy.” The only problem was the flowers. “They were artificial,” he said. “I wasn’t happy with them, but natural flowers can’t get into Gaza because Israel does not allow them in.”

Sami says he has tried every possible way to get Ola out, without success. She is now applying for scholarships abroad, hoping education might provide a route to evacuation and, eventually, to him.

Sami recently travelled to Mecca for Umrah, where one prayer remained constantly on his mind. “I prayed, ‘God, please bring us together soon,’” he said. “But one thing I know for sure: I will wait for her for the rest of my life, until God brings us together.”