JERUSALEM — Under the children in the Gaza Strip who survived almost 11 months of war is a new generation being and amputees. And then there is 8-year-old Sama.
Although they still both parents And all her limbsSama Tabeel has lost almost all of her hair to the unbearable stress of war. “I’m terrified of the shelling,” she tells NBC News from a camp in Khan Younis. She covers her bald head with a pink bandana that she rarely takes off and kills time by playing with a doll whose hair she braids, longing for her own.
Sama’s mother watches with a heavy heart as her daughter sobs through much of the interview. “Sama was exposed to horror, fear and panic,” said Olfat Tabeel, 33.
One night they woke up to the sound of shelling over their tent in Rafah, Tabeel said. They escaped and ran to a hospital, where they were bombed again. Two or three days later, she said, “my daughter was combing her hair and she said to me, ‘Look, Mom.’”
Some doctors thought Sama had alopecia, but her hair fell out all at once, not slowly. doctor gave her medicinebut the side effects were too strong for an 8-year-old. Another suggested that Sama should have a scalp analysis, “but this kind of test doesn’t exist in Gaza,” Tabeel said.
And the real healing may require things even more elusive in Gaza: “More than one doctor told us it’s a psychological state and fear,” Tabeel said, “and she has vitamins and healthy food.”
Sama, Tabeel said, was not like her other daughter. She loved her hair. “Before the war, she would stand by the mirror, comb it all the time and say, ‘Mom, give me a haircut,'” Tabeel said. “She drove me crazy with haircuts; she would do three or four haircuts a day.”
Tabeel said: “I often wake up in the morning and see my daughter holding the mirror and screaming, screaming.”
Sama has stopped playing with other children who bully her because she is bald. Her sister stays with her, wearing a bandana in solidarity.
Tabeel said that as they ran away from the shelling, Sama was shaking with fear and screaming that she didn’t want to die. “But now Sama tells me, ‘Mom, I want to die.'”
According to a March report from Save the ChildrenMonths of violence, displacement, famine and disease have wreaked havoc on the mental health of Gaza’s children. Children have lost their appetites or started wetting the bed. Others have stopped talking. Before the war, some wanted to be doctors or teachers when they grew up, but their dreams have shrunk to the limited hopes of conflict, such as driving a donkey cart to deliver aid.
In 2022, Save the Children discovered that the 15-year-old air, land and sea blockade that Israel has imposed on the enclave has already had a devastating impact: 55% of Gaza’s population children had suicidal thoughtsa situation that has only become worse because of the war.
According to local health authorities, more than 40,000 peopleincluding thousands of children, have been killed in Gaza since the war began on October 7, when Hamas attacked southern Israel. About 1,200 have been killed, 790 of them civilians, and about 240 kidnapped, according to Israeli authorities.
Tabeel says Sama is psychologically broken and there are few signs she will be safe anytime soon. A few days ago, she says, there was extensive shooting outside their tent and Sama woke up terrified and asked to be held, “so I hugged her and let her fall asleep.”
“Our house is gone, my grandfather is gone, my aunt is gone, I lost my hair and I’m afraid of losing any of my siblings, my brother, my sister, my mother, my father; I’m afraid of losing any of my siblings,” Sama said.
“She needs psychological stability,” Tabeel said. “Her mental state is destroyed.”
Sama dreams of one day returning to their home in northern Gaza to dig through the rubble. “I want to dig to find my toys, and the teacher’s gifts, and my dresses,” she said.
And she hopes her hair will grow again by her ninth birthday in October, almost a year after the war began.
If you or someone you know is at risk of suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at 800-273-8255, text TALK to 741741 or visit SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for additional resources.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
