Waiting for Goldot... and a free Palestine

Unbearable pain…from Gaza The pain is so severe that I can hardly bear it. Every moment feels as though my soul is being torn from my body. More than six doctors have examined me, yet none has been able to diagnose my condition or identify the cause of this agony. Eventually, one doctor insisted that I needed a CT scan, after an MRI proved impossible because not a single hospital in the Gaza Strip had one available. Last Sunday, I went to book an appointment for the scan. The employee told me that I would have to wait two and a half years for my turn. Yes. Two and a half years! This is no joke. Nor was there any mistake in the calculation. At that moment, I stopped worrying about when I would get my scan. All I could think about was whether I would even survive another week of such unbearable pain. The doctor had stamped my referral with one clear word: “URGENT”. The most they could do was bring my appointment forward to Thursday – yesterday. I went to the hospital. There, I saw more than fifty people who had come for their CT scans, and another forty-eight waiting to book appointments. Most were carrying referrals stamped “URGENT”. Yet the earliest appointments they were being offered were sometime next year! An elderly man came forward and stood beside me. He handed the employee his medical papers. The employee looked through his test results, frowned sadly, and told him: “Uncle, you won’t be able to have the scan. Your kidney function levels are too high.” The old man did not understand what the employee meant. He simply looked at him, his eyes filling with tears and his hands trembling even more. Then he said: “My son, I’ve been waiting for this appointment since March!” Seven whole months this man had waited for the chance to have a CT scan. And when his turn finally came, he was told that his health had deteriorated to the point where he could no longer undergo the procedure. Then another woman approached, desperately pleading with the staff to bring forward her only son’s appointment. He had suffered a stroke affecting his face, and he was only sixteen years old. Next came a young man who told the employee: “Today was my mother’s CT scan appointment… but she died a week ago.” As I was leaving the hospital, the sound of an ambulance suddenly broke through the air. It had arrived at speed, carrying three injured people: A young man whose foot had been amputated. A man whose chest was covered in blood. And a child with his head wrapped in bandages, blood covering half his body. I walked out of that hospital and broke down in tears. I could no longer bear what I had seen and heard. Oh, God… We are neither truly living nor allowed the mercy of death. In Gaza, every person suffering in pain is, if they are among the lucky ones, holding a medical referral stamped with the word “URGENT”. As for the date of their medical scan, it is further away than the date of their own death. Have mercy on us, O Allah. We turn to You, acknowledging our sins. Forgive us, pardon us, have mercy on us, lift this terrible suffering from our shoulders, and relieve us of this unbearable hardship. You are the Most Merciful of all. Banan Abdullah