STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Two years ago, Israelis heard the sound of gunfire as militants came out of Gaza to attack. It's hard to take in how much has changed in those two years all through the Middle East. And we're hearing different perspectives throughout this day. Elsewhere this morning, a former Israeli hostage speaks, and right now, we hear the story of a family in Gaza. NPR's Aya Batrawy is in Dubai and NPR's Anas Baba is in Gaza.
AYA BATRAWY, BYLINE: Nidal Dalul (ph) describes the moment when he first became a father and laid eyes on his daughter. Dalul says it was dawn on Sunday, January 2, 2021, when the nurses brought her to him. She came after several rounds of IVF, two days of labor and weighing 7.7 pounds.
NIDAL DALUL: (Non-English language spoken).
BATRAWY: She was finally in his arms, white like milk, he says.
DALUL: (Non-English language spoken).
BATRAWY: He named her Nour, which means light in Arabic. The light, he says, of the heavens and Earth.
DALUL: (Non-English language spoken).
BATRAWY: Dalul is in his mid-30s. He dropped out of school by third grade and earned a few hundred dollars a month working odd jobs as an adult, a typical life of poverty in Gaza. When he married his wife, they lived in a room in his parents' home in Gaza City. Nour's birth gave Dalul's life meaning and purpose, he says. He recalls whispering the Muslim call to prayer into her ear after she was born.
DALUL: (Non-English language spoken).
BATRAWY: She was a daddy's girl, showering him with kisses, helping him forget his troubles.
DALUL: (Non-English language spoken).
BATRAWY: Dalul says Nour stole his heart and became his world.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
NOUR: (Singing in a non-English language).
BATRAWY: In home videos like this, he films Nour, with her straight black hair and wide eyes, dancing and singing, showered with the attention of the only child.
DALUL: (Non-English language spoken).
BATRAWY: When war broke out, Nour was just shy of 2 years old. In the months that followed, the family faced starvation in the north, displacement. And Dalul says he survived Israeli attacks trying to get flour off aid trucks. The family lived through 716 days of the war, until September 22. That's when an Israeli airstrike targeted Nour's grandfather's home in an apartment block in Gaza City. And that's when NPR met Dalul. Here's NPR's reporter, Anas Baba, describing the encounter.
ANAS BABA, BYLINE: When I walked into the hospital, I saw all these bodies on the ground. It was an airstrike, and we rushed to the hospital. I saw a man between all of the people. He was laying on the ground of the hospital cuddling his own daughter, I believe. She was covered in blood, flies all over her. The doctors, they told me that they were trying to convince him to let her go. And he refused for almost three hours.
BATRAWY: He couldn't let her go.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
DALUL: (Crying).
BATRAWY: The airstrike killed Nour just one week before President Trump announced his plan for ending the war. NPR obtained video of the immediate aftermath of the attack.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
DALUL: (Non-English language spoken).
(CROSSTALK)
BATRAWY: In it, Dalul is trying to reach his daughter from under the rubble.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
DALUL: (Non-English language spoken).
(CROSSTALK)
BATRAWY: He and his wife scream out her name. They walk over rubble, under fallen concrete slabs and into fires to reach the 4-year-old. But this is the moment they find her, dead in the back of an ambulance.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
MERVAT HASSANEIN: (Shouting in non-English language).
BATRAWY: On the day she was killed, Nour was with her grandfather at his home in Gaza City. That afternoon, he was told by neighbors the Israeli army was about to bomb a building next to his. The military had ordered that building evacuated. But the building where Nour was was also struck, without warning.
HASSANEIN: (Non-English language spoken).
BATRAWY: Nour's mother, Mervat Hassanein, lists the family members she lost that day. Her father, her brother, his wife, their kids, her sister and her daughter, Nour. They were among 11 people the health ministry says were killed in that midday attack. Israel's military says it was targeting a Hamas facility but did not specify if they were referring to the building with the clinic or the apartment block. The military told NPR that prior to the strike, precautionary measures were taken to mitigate harm to civilians.
Nour is among approximately 20,000 children Gaza's health ministry says have been killed in Israeli bombings and gunfire in the last two years of war. UNICEF says an average of 28 children have been killed in Gaza every day, the equivalent, they say, of an entire classroom. An independent U.N. inquiry has determined Israel has committed genocide in Gaza, which Israel denies. But Hassanein says families, like her brother's, have been eradicated and that this is a genocide.
HASSANEIN: (Non-English language spoken).
BATRAWY: Gaza's health ministry says 2,700 nuclear families have been killed in the war. Another 6,000 families have just one survivor. Without Nour, this family is hollowed. The couple now lives in a makeshift tent after finding their way south. She was buried in Gaza City. Her parents can't visit her grave because the only road north is blocked by Israeli forces. Dalul says the hardest feeling as a father is not being able to give your child food, money or safety.
DALUL: (Non-English language spoken).
BATRAWY: They are like others in Gaza, who may survive this war, but whose hearts have been buried. He can't find the words.
DALUL: (Non-English language spoken).
BATRAWY: "It's indescribable," he says.
Aya Batrawy, NPR News, Dubai, with Anas Baba in Gaza City.
(SOUNDBITE OF SAM GENDEL'S "TRIO 2006") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
