Gaza Diaries with Dr. Omar Suleiman
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"If You Hear Bombing, Say Alhamdulilah" | Gaza Diaries
Dr. Omar Suleiman sits down with Dr. Haifaa Younis, who recently returned from spending the last nights of Ramadan in Northern Gaza volunteering as an OBGYN. Dr. Younis describes the selfless gratitude that everyone in Gaza exhibits amidst the chaos, sharing numerous stories of perseverance, patience, generosity, and reliance upon Allah that she witnessed there.
Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh, Dr. Haifa, it's wonderful to have you with us. Alhamdulillahi rabbil alameen. Alhamdulillah, salamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. May Allah Azza wa Jalla bless you and reward you for your time going to Gaza. How was your experience? Wa alaikum assalam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. JazakAllah khair for having me. Alhamdulillah, Allah made it happen. How was my experience? There is no word. You know, al-kalam yaskut. The words, the speech becomes hollow and has no meaning. This is how it is. I have to say I'm extremely grateful to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. He gave me this opportunity. But whatever I say, it will not give it justice, subhanAllah. Lessons and lessons you learn from these people. I honestly don't know how they have been doing this. For six months now, we're getting to the seventh month. The whole eight days we were there, not a, the only word of complaint, if you want to even call it complaint, I heard, was one of the nurses looked at me and says, daktora ta'abna. We are tired. It's, subhanAllah, subhanAllah. You obviously were watching it, subhanAllah, for the months leading up to it. We even did a talk together about how we could observe, you know, such resilience from afar. Was there anything that was different about being there versus seeing it from afar? Was there anything that surprises you or anything that was re-emphasized to you when you were there? Absolutely. The magnitude of it. With the hospital we were there, it's two buildings. One is the main hospital, ER and everything. And the other one was the maternity building. Once the war started, the maternity building became the trauma center.
But that's not it. The hospital, more than 50% of the people in the hospital are not patients. They're actually, they call them displaced, muhajireen. As you enter on the left side, there is a mattress and there is a woman. So I saw her day one, day two, day three, it. So I had to talk to her and she said, I've been here for three months. Me and my, wallahi, me and my daughter, one mattress. What do you eat? Whatever they give us. Whatever rabbi jeeb, whatever Allah brings. Where is the bathroom? For the patient in here. And here is every corner. To walk in that building, you have to say, excuse me, salam alaikum. Because either there's injured, there's family, there is stretchers to get up. And this woman, where is your family? She said, have gone. And couple of them are still in the north. These people all came from the north, from Gaza City. She says, my husband and son are still in the north. My daughter with me, the rest I don't know. And you know what I don't know mean? Yeah. May Allah forgive me for this, but just to make it clearer for everybody. You know when they want you to taste something? They say, this is appetizer. Everything we are seeing including from the journalist inside is one, two, 3% from what we saw and when you are there and you see day in, day out. Enough, for eight days you live with this sound. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. And I was thought, what is this? Because my bed was exactly next to the window. Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzaa... ...Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzaa
And they say it's so casual, oh this is the drones. Doctor, don't be scared, I said drones. I said, oh no, as long as you hear it, then you're safe. It's when it's quiet, you need to be careful. And if you hear the sound of bombing, you need to smile. Listen to this, subhanAllah. If it is coming to you, you will feel nothing. Either you will feel nothing because you're dead, or the next thing you'll see, everything is in your head. You will not hear the sound of the bombing. Almost everyone I spoke to, will this end? What will happen? Nobody can predict, but they have this faith that it will end. SubhanAllah, there's a culture that develops around being in a genocide. Tactics that people learn how to cope with, and things that become street instincts for the kids, for the elders. When you were there, and you were kind of living it, and seeing the people running back and forth, did you feel like people had given up on Gaza as a whole? At all. SubhanAllah. Two things you hear. Every age I talked with, it's our land, we're not leaving. Those who may be not as strong as this, they say, leave, go where? No one said, except if they have elderly, like parents, or people who are sick. For example, there was a girl, subhanAllah, for six days, as we walk to go to our room, you pass, of course she's in the corridor, has leg injury. It is not amputated, actually, one of the surgeons here saved it. And then we speak, and she's a very bubbly, happy child,
11 years old, I don't know who's with her. And then she looked at me one day and says, guess where I'm going tomorrow? I said, where? And smiling, she said, I'm going to Egypt. And I said, why? She said, because they're gonna take care of my leg. That's the only reason why she is happy. But the fact they want to leave, no. Everyone says, when we go back. Even when we are leaving, it was very emotional when we were leaving. It was like, next time, because we were in the middle, we're in Derbala, they said, next time you'll come and visit us in Gaza, Gaza City, in the north. As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullah. I'm actually talking to you from the call room at Shuhada al-Aqsa Hospital, I just came from the ER and I saw a patient with vaginal bleeding. And you can just hear, that's an ambulance, because there was a bombing and shelling this morning. There is not a single place in this hospital, no waiting room, no corridor, that is not filled with patients, either on stretchers or most of them are on the floors. This needs to stop. There is no reason on earth that this should continue or there is no reason on earth that this should not stop. Civilians should not pay the price for this at all. So I want to kind of walk back to when you first got there, when you first got the call, when you knew that you were going. I know that you'd let me know, subhanAllah, it was at that time, only a few people that knew you were going to Gaza, from Umrah. When you step into that world, what's the first thing that hits you as you step into that world? Let me take you back. I didn't get the call. I wanted to go. Since I learned that people are going, physicians are going, I start filling every application. Nothing. Nothing, subhanAllah.
And then Ramadan start, day four, a friend of mine said, fill this one, this one probably they will. I filled it, nothing. And I really wanted to go, because I felt the least I can do is what I'm doing right now, right? Even if I'm not going to do a lot of medical work, which I did, alhamdulillah, but somebody has to do something at least. So finally, we are on a group in Southern California, Muslim physicians. Before Ramadan, they put a picture of one of the female physicians, out of the blue, I don't know the woman. I texted her. And I said, I want to go. And she said, Dr. Haifa, you want to go? I said, I want to go. She said, I can't now. You have to be after Ramadan. I said, I can't after Ramadan. I have work and everything. It has to be in the last 10 days of Ramadan. That's my day off. These are my days off. Normally, I have nothing in the last 10 days, subhanAllah. And she said, let me see. Till two days before we're going, we didn't know we're going. They prepped us that you may be in Egypt, and they will not let you go. Allah made it happen. Still, when you are in the car, and it's 16 hours car ride, it is only five hours, 450 kilos, but there's a lot off. So you reach to Rafah, it's two sides. So this is the Egyptian side, a gate, and the Palestinian side. You leave the Rafah, the Egyptian, you get to the Palestinian, you don't see Gaza yet, because you go right away to the immigration. They kept you there till everything, you know, the usual. The moment you come out, what do you see? Number one, you don't see any of the destructions, any of the things you have seen. And on the left side, you see, and I have a picture of it, actually. A big sign in red says Gaza. Beautiful. I looked at it, and I was like, am I here? Is it real? SubhanAllah.
And then we were there for about two or three hours. It's almost maghrib time, and I hear someone is reading Quran. Allah, la ilaha illa huwa al-hayyu al-qayyum la ta'khudhu sinatun wa la naum la huwa ma fi al-samawati wa ma fi al-ard man dha allathi yashfa'u ʿindahu illa bi-idhnih ya'lamu ma bayna aydihim wa ma khalfahum wa la yuhaytun bishay'in min ʿilmihi illa bima sha' wasi'a kursiyu al-samawati wa al-ard wa la ya'uduhu hifdhuma wa la ya'uduhu hifdhuma wa huwa al-Aliyyu l-Azeem What a voice. Just waiting for the adhan. And actually, walillah al-hamd, we had maghrib at the border. Under this sign, we had dates and water. SubhanAllah. There is no words. It's joy. It's happiness. It's you don't believe what you are there. Scared. You don't know what is going to happen. But overall, grateful. I kept saying to Allah, I don't deserve it. But you are generous. How do you explain that to someone who doesn't understand? Why would you go put yourself in a war zone where the airstrikes are frequent, where the Israeli government has shown no regard for any humanitarian law, international law? I mean, people of all sorts are getting killed. How do you explain that to someone that's not Muslim? A colleague comes up to you or says, you know,
why is it that you would put yourself in that situation and then find joy in it? My colleague, she texted me and says, happy Ramadan and happy Eid. And I said, I'm in Gaza. She didn't say anything. Two days later, she texted me and says, are you OK? So when I came back and she said I was doing rounds, there was another Palestinian physician and I was telling him she's there. He said, is she OK? Is she alive? She asked me, I tell you what, I think we as a human, we really need to think of our humanity. Muslims, but I'm talking about in general, what is a human being if you don't feel the others, if you don't feel you can, if you can do something, you can do it for the others. Otherwise, we're going to be what? So what can we do? This is and again, I said this actually at the border after we passed. I looked at my colleagues and I said, I always felt being a physician is a profession gives you a lot. Yes, it's it's a humanity. You help people, but reality, reality gives you a lot. This is the only time where I'm so grateful I felt it at the border. I'm so grateful to Allah. I am a physician because without being physician, this is probably will be very difficult. And number two, exactly. Why do you want to do that? That's when you say being a physician is a humanitarian. It's you help people. And absolutely, that's what they told us, all of us. Even I didn't deliver a lot. I delivered only two people because the the drive from the hospital to the other hospital was not very safe. So they kept telling me not today, maybe tomorrow, maybe tomorrow. But everyone looked at me especially or everybody actually. They said, the fact you are here, tell us that you care.
I never thought that I am doing something big or I'm risking my life. I just felt I have to do it. Each one of us who can, they should do it. And you know what? قُلْ إِنَّ الْمَوْتَ الَّذِي تَفَرِّنُوا مِنْهُ فَإِنَّهُ مُلَّاقِيكُمْ Allah said, the death that you are running away from, it is going to meet you, right? قُلْتُمْ فِي بُرُوجٍ مُشَهِدًا Even if you were in a really big fortress, death will come. So running, not going because I am going to die. Well, any minute we can die. It's going to be tough. It was the toughest thing I've seen in my life. But we need it as a human to change, to feel, to grow, to mature. You have to see this. Honestly, I wish every teenager living in this country, again, this is a wish. I wish I can take them just to go and see. So you see what the reality of life is outside the bubble we are all living in, the bubble of comfort, the bubble of abundance, the bubble of, may Allah forgive me, ungratefulness. You go there and you learn from them. What is your name? Miskel Khitam. Miskel Khitam. How old is Miskel Khitam? Nine. Where are you now, Miskel? At the Martyrs Hospital. Where did you live before? In the corner. And where are you now? In the foreign hospital. Who are you with now? With my family. Mashallah, so what are you doing during the day? There is no school? I am playing. I am watching TV. Are you fasting? Alhamdulillah. May Allah bless you. What are you going to eat for breakfast? I don't know. You don't know? What do you think about the war? Will it end, inshallah? Inshallah. And where will you return to? I will return to my home. Ya Rabbi, ameen.
I think, let's talk a little bit about that, that American Muslim bubble, because I think you're uniquely positioned to talk about it as a da'ia and also as a doctor. How do you sort of convey to a young American Muslim that has such different concerns, whose priorities are so wildly different? How do you convey to them that what you're witnessing is a proof for you or against you in regards to your deen? Two things. When I spoke to them, a good number of them, and I spoke to almost every age, some of them showed me a picture of their life before October 7th. It is a big open prison, but they have adapted themselves to live, some of them lived very comfortable in whatever is available. For example, they tell you, on the weekend we go to the beach. It's a beautiful beach. And we have this, we have that. What I will tell to every American teenager or everyone who's living in this, things can change in a minute. Allah change things. Wa tilkal a'yamu ludawiluha bina an-naas. And I always looked around and I said, this could happen to me. Yes, I live in the States, yes, alhamdulillah, but Allah is capable of doing anything. So the first thing I say, especially to the youth, don't think this is gonna be always like this. Allah can change it. That's number one. Number two, are you ready? This is what striked me, Sheikh Omar. As if they were ready, as if they were ready. We were talking before we started. When you talk to the young people, you don't say, you don't say, do you know Quran? You don't say, have you read Quran? Are you a hafidh, the norm? And then they put their head down like that and said, 10 ajza. 10 ajza? 10. Alhamdulillahi rabbil alameen.
Ar-Rahman ar-Raheem, maliki yawm al-deen. Iyyaka na'budu wa iyyaka nastaeen. Eedina al-sirata al-mustaqeem. Sirata al-madina an'amta alayim. Ghayri al-maghdubi alayim. Wala al-zalim. Listen, and you're talking about 15 or 14 or 13. I met the imam, subhanAllah, who led us for taraweeh and tahajjud. Abdullah, 23-year-old. I didn't know the man. He's reading, beautiful. Ya Allah, taraweeh, we start 12.30, we finish at three, sometimes 3.15. So the last day, as he was greeting us, I said, Abdullah, mashaAllah, you're a hafidh. Feeha ayn jariyah. Feeha surun marfoohan. Wa akhwan marfoohan. Wala maliku maskoofakum. Wa zarabi mabathum. Doctor, I'm not a hafidh. Ana min ahl as-safwa. I'm from the selected. And I said, what is that, ya Abdullah? He said, we are the ahl as-safwa, are those hufadh who recite the whole Quran in one sitting. And he said, and I said, how long this will take? And he said, normally, eight to two. Me, about him, it took me to four. And I said, why is that, ya Abdullah? He said, because I had some mistakes, and they wanted me to review before.
So, this is how I felt. Nobody is ready for what I saw. But Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala, literally, la yukallifu allahu nafsan illa wus'aha, you know the real meaning of it, if Allah tests you of something, that means you can do it. I felt the people of Gaza, Allah have prepared them for this test. The 10 nights, when I opened the door of the room we were in, it's a courtyard, again, everybody was living there. Everyone was reading Quran, or praying. Fajr, because we couldn't go to masjid, so we're praying in our rooms. Fajr, in that small place, all these are displaced people, young and old, they were all doing Fajr in jama'a. Nobody was sleeping. In jama'a, to the point we opened a little bit the door so we can join them. Everybody was reading Quran. That's what the youth needs to know here, that there is way more than, please forgive me, ice cream, or iPhone, which college I'm gonna go to. There is more in this life, that we really need to be ready. Enjoy the blessings of Allah. Wa la tansa nasibaka minad dunya. Yes, but also don't make it the focus. The kid, the youth. The youth of Gaza will not have anxiety because they are applying for college. The youth of Gaza, their anxiety, and I honestly didn't see the anxiety we all talk about here. I met four girls, 18, 16, 14, and 10, and these all six months are sitting home. There's no schools. And the 17-year-old was applying to college, to Jami' al-Islamiyya, which was completely ruined. And nobody worried. Their mother was a little bit worried about the older one. Where is she gonna go for college? But there was no anxiety.
It's something, that's why I told you, beyond. They said, we have to give you a gift. I said, no, thank you. What gift you will give me? Literally, these four girls, they went. Their father is a physician. They lived a very good life before. Now they are living only one room. They went and brought a chocolate box. Subhanallah, they opened. There's no chocolate. There were all these small beads, different color. And they said, we're gonna make a bracelet for you. And how are you gonna make it? You know what, it's also creativity. They had a rubber band, they chose it, and they make it. Their brother, Muhammad, is 11-year-old. So I was teasing him. I said, yeah, Muhammad, come and help them. That's girl's job. Allah, Muhammad, just come and help. But you see, they are making their life as normal as possible. They are not, I think the way they were raised before is on this. This is what I was telling you. They were not prepared for this, but the way they were raised up, that they have a bigger mission. I interviewed, I put it on social media. A woman was displaced from the North, separated from her husband and son, older son, and the younger son was with her. And I said, how did you do it? Walked 10 kilometers, she and her son in the night, in the cold, with all the soldiers on the top. She said, I always grew up and I taught my children that this life is temporary. I'm living for the Akhirah. Wallahi, this is the word. If there is a lesson that all of us have to learn from Gaza, add to it all what we have been talking to, is this dunya is, will change. Tataqallab, nothing will stay. Get ready and be grateful.
Be grateful to everything we have. Alhamdulillah. I want to ask you, last year, or rather the year prior, the earthquake happened, Turkey, Syria, you went to the earthquake site. I guess, walk me through, what's the difference between being in a place where an earthquake has just struck, and a place where there's an act of genocide? What are some experiences, similarities, differences that you found between the two? Subhanallah, you read my mind, Sheikha. Because that question came as I was walking. The earthquake, the destruction was phenomenal. And when I, again, talked to people there, the common word, I said, what happened at 423? They said, we heard, ooh, and we thought it was a day of judgment. Almost everybody. And then the shook, walls fell, and we run. The difference is the following. This is Qadarullah, there's no injustice in here that you see it. Two, the whole world stood with them, right? You turn on the TV, people are talking about it. Every person that can help, helped. There was no discrimination. No, in Turkey, was Qadarullah, destruction. They are living in, they were living in tents.
I saw it, but they were better than what I saw. Plus, they had hope. They knew, within a year, or two max, they will build it, they bring them back. Here, you're talking about a systemic plan to move people, to kill people, and to move them out, and you're not gonna go back. You tell me, why do you destroy all schools? I just got this warning from somebody from Gaza. The ministry there released numbers. Why do you destroy hospitals? Why do you destroy schools? And the, and probably when you will meet with the other physicians, they will tell you, especially the surgeons, you know what they target? If they don't wanna kill you, or kill me, they target your limbs. Why? I didn't see this in Turkey. I saw misery, but that's Qadarullah. And everybody said, Qadarullah mashafaa. But this is, and it was one day. This is not six months, and non-ending. And everybody was saying, move to the north. Even that lady I was telling you about, who said, we live for the Akhira, she said, I said to the soldier, I said, really, you said this? Said, yeah. Said, you told us we are civilians. You told us move. We moved. She said, three places in the north, I moved. And every time I move, they come after us. The way it is, is very different, and the future of it is very different. SubhanAllah. I want you to, I mean, if you don't mind, dig as deep as you can, and the one story that you think will live with you forever, if there's one person that you saw, like just one person who was like, this is the one that I will never forget this person. Is Mahmoud. What is the story of Mahmoud? Mahmoud, his family lives about five, 10 minutes from the hospital.
Now, the people in Gaza lives usually in buildings, and this building is usually for a family. So you have one floor, let's say the parents, then if the daughter is married, or the son, or the uncle, so it's usually family. He said, I came to work, and he's volunteering, and then they start bringing people. It was my house, which was completely bombed. No one survived. Father is in his 40s, mother 37, 18 year old. He's 18, 16, I think was 10 and four. And I said, and what are you doing right now? He said, I've been living in this hospital since that time, about three months now. He said, they gave us a mattress. What are you eating? He said, whatever they give us in the hospital. What about bathroom and shower? With the patients. And the same cause for eight days. What would you say to someone who hears you in America? What would I say? Take us out of Gaza. Take you out? Yes, no one will be left here. No one? No one. What do you see yourself in five or ten years? I don't know. Do you have hope in life, or not? I do, but in Gaza, no one will be left. Because no one will be left. How do you live your daily life? I don't know, I'll do it. When you wake up in the morning, what do you say? I say, thank God, I'm still alive. Yes, praise God. Why do you say, thank God? What can I do? My whole family is gone. I don't have anyone left. So you say, thank God, I'm still alive? Thank God, for everything. Huh? Thank God for everything. Thank God for everything. I get food, I eat, I drink. Thank God. And you help people? Thank God. Mahmoud always helps us. If we need anything, Mahmoud brings it to us. May God bless you, Mahmoud. JazakAllah khair. That's an 18-year-old full of life.
That could be any 18-year-old here. I understand. And one young man, Allah, 23-year-old. They said, come and greet him, because you are the only physician who speaks Arabic in that group. I said, okay. What do I see, Sheikh Omar? Ya Allah, completely cut. No legs, no legs up to the thigh, nothing. And this is gone. So basically just this part. Of course, clearly emaciated. This is working, and all the fluids and everything. I can't remember his name. And ya Allah, the smile on the face of this young man. Alhamdulillah, alhamdulillah. Honestly, I did not hear. I couldn't sit for more than five minutes, because I was like, ya Allah, ya Allah. You know the Sahaba story we hear about, and we say, you know, Abdullah ibn Rawaha. And you say, really? These are these people. He's smiling, his wife next to him. Alhamdulillah, alhamdulillah alive. Alhamdulillah, ya lecturer, alhamdulillah. The scene that will stay with me is the scene of the hospital. It is not a hospital. It is not a market. It's chaos. To move in between, you have to say, salam alaikum, excuse me, salam alaikum, excuse me, and people will move away. In every corner of that hospital. Allahumma astaghfirullah. May Allah grant them victory and help and patience, and allow us to be there with them, Allahumma ameen. Any take home message or last thing that you want to share with the people? What they told me. Because I asked them, what do you want from us? And more than one person said, we don't need anything.
They need a lot. But they said, just go back, tell people about us. Don't forget us. We are here. We are living. And when you come to visit us, that had a lot of impact on us. Because I kept saying, I didn't do much. Not to me, us. You all did a lot. Keep, go back and speak about us, and remind people about a place called Gaza. Jazakum Allah. Allah. May Allah grant them victory, and may Allah allow us to be joined with them. InshaAllah, Gaza will be free, and Palestine as a whole will be free, bi-idhnillah. And we want to thank you once again for going there on our behalf. InshaAllah, next time we'll get to be with you, bi-idhnillah. Bi-idhnillah, inshaAllah. One day. Madadika Allah bi-aziz. Nothing is impossible for Allah. SubhanAllah.
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