# He Found His Wife in Gaza | Gaza Diaries | Dr. Omar Suleiman & Dr. Mohamed Mustafa

**Author:** Dr. Omar Suleiman
**Series:** Gaza Diaries with Dr. Omar Suleiman
**Published:** 2025-10-30
**YouTube:** https://youtu.be/gvzC2-LY48M
**URL:** https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/gaza-diaries/he-found-his-wife-in-gaza-gaza-diaries-dr-omar-suleiman-dr-mohamed-mustafa
**Topics:** Politics & Practical Theology, Social Justice

## Description
In this Gaza Diaries episode, a Palestinian-Australian doctor who volunteered in Gaza recalls paramedics who had to make peace with death, a night when hundreds of injured and dying children filled the hospital wards to overflowing, and a moment that changed a colleague’s worldview as young...

## Chapters
- 0:00 Introduction and Background
- 0:28 First Visit to Palestine
- 1:26 Professional Rugby and Decision to Help
- 2:05 Spiritual Preparation and Family Support
- 7:02 First Mass Casualty Event
- 8:55 Challenges and Guilt
- 14:22 Faith and Resilience
- 19:48 Personal Transformation
- 21:51 Attachment to the Quran
- 23:59 Final Thoughts and Message

## Transcript
**[0:00]** As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. Doctor, welcome. JazakumAllahu khairan for going. BarakAllahu feekum for being there physically when we could not be there with them.

**[0:20]** You are a Palestinian. Have you lived in Palestine before? No. The first time I went to Gaza was during the war. My father was born in Gaza. My auntie, my uncle, my cousins, all my family were in Gaza.

**[0:38]** And it was really unique because the first time that I met my family in Gaza was at Nasser Hospital. And I was seeing all these patients and I got a tap on my shoulder. And I turned around and it was this guy that was bigger than me.

**[0:55]** And he just started hugging me. And I thought, what's going on here? And I took a step back and I realized it was my cousin. And my uncle was stood behind him. And you know, in the family, I'm the smallest one. The smallest one.

**[1:12]** Even my little brothers are bigger than me. So me and my mom, we just sit back. We're the odd ones out. MashaAllah, TabarakAllah. I want to meet this family. And you used to play rugby, right?

**[1:28]** Yeah, I used to play professional rugby. Rugby is like a real sport. For Gazawis. A Gazawi rugby player sounds terrifying. Yeah. MashaAllah. The strength of your mental strength and the physical strength.

**[1:48]** So walk me through it. You're sitting at home in Australia. So you're a Gazawi in your origin. And you're seeing Gaza being decimated and torn to pieces. You've never met your family in Gaza before.

**[2:04]** And you apply to go to Gaza. Spiritually, how do you make that decision? What's going through your mind? What du'as are you making for Allah to either facilitate it or to get you over any apprehension that you might have?

**[2:22]** Walk me through the spiritual process. You know, in Islam, you cannot go to jihad, any form of jihad, without your parents' permission. And the first person that I called was my mom. And you know, I'd been applying to go to Gaza for months.

**[2:42]** Ever since it opened up and the war started, I was applying every single day with every single organization. Let me go to Gaza. I want to help. I want to help. And no one would take me because I'm a young doctor. They want to take all the older guys. And I got a message and they said that there's a spot that's opened up and you can go.

**[3:02]** And the first person I called was my mom and I wanted to get permission from my mom. So, you know, I called her up and I said, Mom, I'm going to go to Gaza in five days. Is it okay? And my mom started crying because at the time, the first time that I went into Gaza was June 2024.

**[3:22]** It was four weeks after the aid workers were killed and World Central Kitchen aid workers were killed. It was when the Rafah border was closed. And there was a lot of tension with international aid workers. And I remember my mom started crying on the phone and she said, I'll call you back.

**[3:42]** And she called me back 15 minutes later and she said, Hamada, which is my name, and she said to me, death is in the hands of Allah. It's not in the hands of Israel.

**[3:57]** So I'm going to leave you in the hands of Allah. And she just, she said to me, just make sure your intention is pure. That's all she said.

**[4:12]** SubhanAllah, you know, she's amazing. Allah yihfadha, mashaAllah, that's incredible. For a mom who brought you into this world by the permission of Allah to say that,

**[4:28]** go because death is in the hands of Allah, not Israel. So once she said that and you realized you're going, what's going through your mind as you're getting on the plane, on your way to the airport, making your way?

**[4:44]** You know, I was scared. I was scared. I wasn't scared of dying. You know, because I knew what the risks that I was willing to take when I was to go to Gaza. I knew I was willing to do anything.

**[5:01]** But I was worried that whether my intention was pure. That's what I was worried about the most when I was going in. I was thinking, you know, if my intention's not pure on the Day of Judgment, the first people that go to hell are the martyrs, are the huffadh of the Qur'an,

**[5:18]** are the ones that gave zakah. And I didn't want to be the guy that goes in first. I was just going, oh my God, imagine if I'm going in hell first. Oh, it'd be so bad. So that literally was what I was thinking about. I was thinking, how do I know my intention is pure?

**[5:35]** Literally, even when I was on the bus, in the UN buses we got, and we were driving through Israel, and we were going to Gaza, and I was thinking, right, Mo, your intention has got to get pure now. Like, think happy thoughts.

**[5:50]** How do I purify my intention? That was literally what my thoughts were every single day I was in Gaza. It was, how do I make sure my intention is pure? JazakAllah khair. While you're...

**[6:06]** So you get into Gaza, you're concerned about your intentions. SubhanAllah, I know. Where's Thaira, by the way, Dr. Thaira, you here? Ameen, Dr. Thaira, mashaAllah, who also, by the way, the very first Gaza diary, alhamdulillah,

**[6:21]** was with Dr. Thaira, jazakAllah khair, who went to Gaza as well. May Allah bless him. Walked out on the Biden administration, alhamdulillah, ibn al-Amin, and sent a strong message. May Allah bless him and bless all the doctors that have gone. When you get to Gaza, they have these, what they call the mass casualty events, right?

**[6:39]** And that's what the doctors will talk about. Suddenly, something happens, and then you get a flood of, an influx of people into the hospital. I imagine that things become that much more real at that point. It's not just when you walk into the hospital and see the destruction,

**[6:54]** but the first mass casualty incident. Can you talk us through what that was? Do you know, the first time I saw a mass casualty event, it was a missile strike on a children's playground.

**[7:09]** And they came and they brought in these blankets. And the first blanket that I, because they put them down on the floor, and you don't know who's alive, who's dead, what injuries they have. I remember the first blanket that I opened, and it was a child with half his head missing.

**[7:25]** And as I opened the blankets, parts of his brain were being pulled out. And I remember freezing in fear. And I was frozen for about 15, 20 seconds. And this nurse started shaking my shoulder.

**[7:42]** And she's going, Ya doctor, ya doctor, mehtajina, we need you, we need you. I remember just snapping out of it and going, right, we need to get to work. And, you know, there were kids on the floor that were taking their last breaths, severely injured.

**[7:58]** And I knew we couldn't do anything to help them, and we just left them there. And, you know, the one thing that really stuck to me the most was, there was a nurse, she was a student nurse, and she walked into the emergency room. She didn't ask who needs help.

**[8:14]** She didn't go and reach out for any medicines. She literally sat down in the middle of the floor, and she picked up this child and put his head on her lap, and she just stroked his head until he died. And he died two minutes later. And I remember because I was looking at the corner of my eye

**[8:30]** while she was doing that, and I thought to myself, SubhanAllah, how many times has she done that, that she walked in almost perfectly, knows her role, which was to comfort this child because she knew he was going to die. And I remember it really had a very big profound effect on me

**[8:47]** the first time I had that mass casualty event. And, you know, I was there for some of the worst mass casualty events of the war. I was there the day that they, you know, rescued the four Israeli hostages and killed 1,400 Palestinians,

**[9:03]** injured and killed in the space of two hours. I was there the night that the ceasefire broke. And, you know, from a spiritual level, an Islamic level, right,

**[9:20]** there was this man that came into the emergency department. And, you know, we have our pocket ultrasounds on us, so I was scanning his chest, and it was filled with blood. So he was literally there on the floor, and he was,

**[9:37]** his whole body was injured, covered in shrapnel. And I started cutting through his chest with my knife to get this chest drain in, and I put the chest drain in, and I carried him with the chest drain in, and I took him to the CT scanner,

**[9:52]** and he died while he was getting scanned on the CT scanner. And, you know, we didn't even have enough time, because it's one CT scanner for the whole hospital, the whole north of Gaza, and we've got hundreds of people injured.

**[10:07]** And we literally just pushed him off the CT scanner to bring the next patient on. That's how desperate the situation was. And this man that died, he had three daughters. They were all four years and younger. And I remember running back to the emergency department

**[10:23]** to get these girls. I remember thinking to myself that I've let them down,

**[10:42]** because their father died in my arms, and they're orphans now. I remember carrying these girls. And, you know, that night that the ceasefire broke, they killed 200 children in an hour.

**[10:57]** And most of them came to our hospital. Most of them came in plastic bags. And I remember carrying these three girls. And, you know, we were looking up, and the CT scanner is in the other side of the hospital,

**[11:13]** so you have to run through the courtyard. And I remember carrying these girls, and I remember just thinking to myself, you know, that you can see the explosions are still going off in the corner. The drones are everywhere.

**[11:28]** I don't know if I'm going to survive. Like, you know, it was a scary night, but it wasn't me that I was worried about. You know, I was looking up, and I was thinking, you know, I'm just a junior doctor. There should be a doctor there. It should be there, a board-certified doctor, not me.

**[11:44]** I thought there should be a better Muslim than me. There, not me. Do you know, like, I pray my five prayers. I fast. I give zakah. But I was thinking, like, look at this carnage.

**[11:59]** Look at these children. Look how many dead there are. I was like, this needs a strong Muslim to be here. It needs a professor to help these people, not me. And I just felt guilty. I felt guilty that I couldn't save the father,

**[12:16]** and I felt guilty that I had these three girls, and they were severely injured, and I was struggling. I was struggling, and, you know, it was guilt. It was guilt the whole night that I had, just guilt at how many people died in front of me,

**[12:33]** and no matter how hard we tried, no matter how many we managed to stabilize, it just seemed like more and more were coming in and more and more were dying, and it was a very difficult night. And, you know, it's difficult because, for me,

**[12:51]** these kids, they look like me, you know. Some of them even share the last name as me, and, you know, it affects me differently, I think. I still think about a lot of those patients that night,

**[13:09]** and I think there was one video that I posted of a child staring at a wall, rocking back and forth, and, you know, I remember seeing him at the start of the night, and I remember losing him. I didn't know where he was at the end of the night,

**[13:24]** but I knew his whole family had been killed, and I couldn't find him afterwards, and I was just worried. I was like, where did he go? Who took him? But we were just so busy, and this is the devastation of a mass casualty event, is it's nothing like you've ever experienced before.

**[13:43]** When you see that many children dead, when you see that many children coming in plastic bags, when you see children with heads missing, when you see kids and women with 80% body burns and no painkillers, this is the reality of every single day in Gaza.

**[14:03]** I want to reward you for being there. I chose you to be there. How many people did you see die saying, this is the last words, or reading Qur'an?

**[14:18]** Do you know, there's a doctor that, he's an Australian, white Australian doctor, and he works in the same hospital as me, and he's an anesthetist,

**[14:34]** so he puts these patients to sleep, and then when they wake up, and before he went to Gaza, he was an atheist, and when he came back from Gaza, he came up to me, and he said,

**[14:50]** Mo, I want you to take me to the mosque. And I said, why? And he said, you know, I've been an anesthetist for over 40 years. And he goes, and you know, when people wake up, they're usually talking gibberish, they're

**[15:09]** swearing, sometimes they're violent. He goes, but you know, when we were anesthetizing kids in Gaza, they would wake up and they would all be almost singing. And he goes, when I would ask the staff around me, what's this kid saying? Or what's this person saying? They would say it was the Qur'an.

**[15:25]** And he says, every single kid that he would operate on, they would wake up under this anesthesia and they'd be reciting Qur'an as they would wake up. And it changed his heart. He went from not believing, you know, he said to me, he went, I was always sad.

**[15:40]** I had a wife, kids, a nice house, a nice car, but I always felt empty. And he goes, but when I went to Gaza, and I'd see these people would lose everything, and they would have something that I never had. And it was their Islam. And, you know, subhanAllah, he goes to the mosque quite a lot, learning about Islam.

**[15:59]** So how do you kind of reckon with, it's really interesting, subhanAllah, I know you probably asked me this question, but I'll just put it out here for the sake of conversation.

**[16:14]** You have people losing faith, watching Gaza. You have people in Gaza increasing in faith as a result of what's happening to them. How do you explain that phenomenon? Like what did you see of iman in faith in Gaza? Like how did it affect your own understanding of faith to see what was there?

**[16:32]** Do you know, I remember once I was in a, it was, look, I mean, I just don't follow rules. I mean, that's, and I would stay at my uncle's house. Now, you're going to stay at the hospital or in the safe house, but I would go stay

**[16:48]** at my uncle or my auntie's house. And, you know, everyone kind of know who I was because I always wore this hat with a watermelon on it and my NGO jacket. And it had like the English flag and the Australian flags. Everyone knew I was an outsider. But because they'd cut off the fuel, I would be walking from the hospital to my uncle's

**[17:08]** house. And it was like a 25 minute walk. And I was walking with the drones everywhere, bombings going off. And I just lived the life of a Gazawi. And I remember as I was walking from my uncle's house to the hospital this one time, this ambulance pulled up and it was one of the paramedics.

**[17:25]** And he went, hey doctor, come in the ambulance. He was like, where are you going? I was like, oh, I'm going to the hospital. He's like, oh, I'm going to the hospital as well. I was like, oh, is there anyone in the back? And he's like, no, no, no, just come.

**[17:40]** And, you know, we got in the ambulance. And this was the time when they just found those bodies of those paramedics. Because I was there then when they found the body of the paramedics. And I said to him, you know, are you not scared? Are you not scared that you're going to get killed?

**[17:57]** Are you not scared that you're going to die? And, you know, he said to me, and this guy was smiling and joking and laughing with me. And then he said to me, he says, I'm already dead.

**[18:12]** He goes, we're already dead. And I thought, subhanAllah, what fascinated me about when he said we're already dead is that it wasn't the fact that he was pessimistic. It wasn't the fact that he'd given up.

**[18:28]** It was the fact that he made peace with death. And he was going to live his life regardless. He was going to be happy. He was going to drink his coffee. He was going to offer me a chocolate bar. He was going to laugh and joke with me.

**[18:44]** Because when he said to me, we're already dead, it just meant for him he'd accepted death. And that was something that freed him. It freed him to be brave. It freed him to drive this ambulance knowing that they could kill him at any moment.

**[18:59]** But he was free. And he was free because he accepted what came from Allah. And that was something that really stuck with me. That these people, they walk in a realm that is different to us. So subhanAllah, I was blown away.

**[19:16]** And it made me really rethink of the way that I view life and the way that I walk through life. You know, they're walking with no fear. No fear. Because the worst thing that could happen is death. And if you accept death, you're free. And even though Palestine and Gaza is occupied, the people there are free.

**[19:35]** They're spiritually free. So on a personal level, I'm going to ask you the same question I asked Mahmoud.

**[19:50]** Who are you before and who are you after on a personal level? Well, before, I was a single man. After, I got married.

**[20:08]** Congratulations, by the way. You were waiting for years. I think he was hoping for a round of applause for that. You know, it's interesting about getting married.

**[20:23]** I won't bore you with all the details of how it all went down. Or how we went out trying to find some gifts in Gaza for her to present to her. Because I was like, I need to get her a gift. And obviously all the shops are all destroyed.

**[20:43]** But you know, the interesting thing is, I went into Gaza thinking, I'm here to help Gaza. I'm going to make a difference. I'm going to give Gaza my time, my energy, my effort. You know, and you think you go in there, that you are the one that's going to go in there

**[21:00]** and help and make a difference. And you're going to give something to Gaza. But I left Gaza with Noor, with my wife. And I thought to myself, SubhanAllah, even though Gaza is destroyed,

**[21:15]** even though these people have lost everything, and I went to Gaza to help, I left Gaza richer than when I left. And that's the generosity of the people of Gaza. And that's the beauty of Gaza.

**[21:31]** Is just when you think that you've understood everything and you know what's happening, SubhanAllah, Gaza gives me the greatest gift of all and has given me this amazing woman and a wife. BarakAllahu lakum wa barak alaykum wa jama' baynakum fi khayr

**[21:51]** I have to ask you because we just had a class on the Qur'an and the reassurance of the Qur'an. What can you say about the people of Gaza and their relationship with the Qur'an? You mentioned the kids coming up, but is there anything else you can share about the Qur'an or the effect of the Qur'an on the people of Gaza

**[22:06]** as you noticed that some doctors, maybe, or nurses or just the average person there? Do you know, I remember the first time I went there, I was at the European hospital and there was about 20,000-30,000 people

**[22:22]** in the hospital grounds. And I remember everywhere you walked, people would be sat down and they'd be reading Qur'an. And we went to this Qur'an school in the hospital

**[22:39]** and they wanted to show us the Qur'an. So we went in and we would sit at the back and there would be the teacher and he'd be reading Qur'an and then he would point at somebody and they would stand up

**[22:54]** and they would start reading Qur'an. And they'd be like young girls, like four or five years old, and they were reading Qur'an and more Qur'an than I ever could. I thought to myself, SubhanAllah, and it was hot, it was like 12 o'clock, it was the heat of summer, it was like 50 degrees in the tents.

**[23:12]** But they were still there learning Qur'an every single day and one class would finish, they would leave and the next class would come in and this would go on for about 10 hours a day of like 10 different classes from all ages. So even though they weren't going to school,

**[23:29]** they were still going to Qur'an school. So they weren't learning anything else but the Qur'an. And that's the amazing thing about Gazawis, they have their priorities straight. They truly are people of Qur'an.

**[23:45]** There were over 50,000 huffadh in Gaza before the genocide, SubhanAllah. Truly an incredible people when it comes to their level of attachment to the Qur'an. I'm going to ask you in conclusion,

**[24:00]** when you were leaving, I'm sure there was a whole tell the people this, tell the people that, what do you think the people of Gaza want to deliver through you to the people that are here and the people that are watching?

**[24:18]** You know, it's a deep question. You know, it's us that's dead, it's Gaza that's alive.

**[24:36]** That's the truth. There isn't really a message, I don't think, that the people of Gaza would want me to deliver because for them there's this frustration that they feel that the world is not listening,

**[24:53]** that they feel that the world doesn't care. And, you know, even though I'm from Gaza and I'm Palestinian, I occupy a space to try and be a voice for the people of Gaza. But I'm only keeping this space warm

**[25:08]** so that the people of Gaza can come and they can talk and they can tell their story. So it's not for me and it's not for any other activist. What we really need is we need to elevate their voices because for years, Muslims, Arabs, Gaza,

**[25:24]** they've been so dehumanized because we've not had a platform, because we've not been able to talk. And I think if there's one thing I think that I would share with everyone is that we need to platform their voices, whether it's Palestinians, whether it's Sudanese people,

**[25:41]** whether it's the Rohingya, whether it's the Uyghurs, it's their voice. The dehumanization starts because you don't know these people and the only way to humanize them is not through your voice, it's through their voice. Thank you.

**[25:58]** JazakAllah khairan. It's a pleasure to finally meet you in person. It's a pleasure to meet you too. We missed each other in the UK, but Alhamdulillah. May Allah bless you and reward you and bless your marriage, protect your family.

**[26:13]** May Allah Azawajal allow you to be reunited with them in this life and in the next. May Allah Azawajal allow us to celebrate all of that joy in this life, in the night as well as in the hereafter. May Allah bless you for your sacrifices

**[26:28]** and all of the doctors that have gone. You truly are our heroes. May Allah bless you all. JazakAllah khairan.

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