'I cannot carry all of this alone': the couples separated by the Gaza war
Couples separated by the Gaza war include Wijdan Abu Matar, 43, who left Gaza in November 2023 with her eight children for medical treatment while her injured husband Hatem stayed behind, and photojournalist Sami Abu Tabaq, 29, who left in April 2024, leaving his fiancee Ola.
'I cannot carry all of this alone': the couples separated by the Gaza war
The Gaza war has pulled thousands of Palestinian families apart, and for two of them the separation has stretched on for years. Wijdan Abu Matar fled to Egypt with her children while her husband stayed in a tent in Nuseirat. Sami Abu Tabaq, a photojournalist, left the strip months after his wedding date passed, and his fiancee Ola is still waiting for a way out.
A mother of eight in Egypt, a husband in a tent in Nuseirat
Wijdan Abu Matar, 43, was living in the Nuseirat refugee camp when the war began with Hamas's 7 October 2023 attack on Israel. Ten days in, on 17 October 2023, an Israeli strike hit the al-Muhandseen tower near her home and injured her and every member of her family.
The injuries ran through the household:
- Her daughter Nour, 15, suffered the most serious harm, with a fractured skull and bleeding in the brain, and spent about 33 days in intensive care.
- Her daughter Amna, five, suffered severe burns to her chest.
- Amna and Aysel, three and a half, were treated at a different hospital for 15 days.
Hatem, Wijdan's husband, was injured too. A serious leg injury has left him with restricted mobility, and today he lives in a tent in Nuseirat.
On 30 November 2023, Wijdan travelled with Nour to a hospital in Egypt for treatment, and the family remained scattered across Egypt for months.
'I have become both the mother and the father'
In Egypt, Wijdan carries the household on her own. Her only support is donations, since she has no steady income. Hatem, for his part, has now gone 10 months without a salary, and his injury rules out any work.
The weight shows in the details. Five of her children should be in school in Egypt, but she cannot afford the transportation to send them. Nour still needs medical treatment, and Wijdan often cannot afford her medication.
She described what the separation has made of her. "I have become both the mother and the father to my children," she said, adding that the responsibility exhausts her.
Even speaking to Hatem is difficult because of Gaza's unreliable internet connection. When they do reach each other, she says, he tells her he is counting the days until he can see the family again.
Wijdan also carries a private count of the war's cost. "I have lost 35 members of my family in this war," she said.
An engagement interrupted: Sami and Ola
Sami Abu Tabaq, a 29-year-old Palestinian photojournalist, had to leave the Gaza Strip in April 2024. When he went, both his family and his fiancee Ola stayed behind.
The two had become engaged five months before the war began, after meeting by chance when Sami chose Ola's family home as a photoshoot location. Their wedding had been scheduled for November 2023, and the couple had prepared a house to live in. That home was badly damaged and later destroyed, along with Sami's family home in Tal al-Zaatar, Jabaliya.
When Sami fled south with his sister and her children, he could not reach Ola to say goodbye. Unable to return north, he asked his brother to check on her after he saw reports that a residential block near her home in Gaza City had been bombed. His brother eventually confirmed that she and her family were alive.
The war followed him south. Four journalists who had shared his tent were later killed, including Hamza al-Dahdouh, a son of the Al Jazeera journalist Wael al-Dahdouh.
Still waiting to marry
The threat of an Israeli ground invasion of Rafah in 2024 pushed Ola to tell Sami he should get out. He paid a company that was arranging crossings into Egypt for both of them, but she never managed to get to southern Gaza, so he went alone. Her parting words, as he recalls them: "You go, and I'll follow you." The two remain unmarried and are still waiting.
Ola has kept building a life inside Gaza City during the war. She completed her bachelor's degree in nursing at the Islamic University of Gaza.
Her family has paid heavily. The journalist Ayat Khadoura, Ola's cousin, was among the dead, and roughly 50 other members of her extended family were killed alongside her.
From abroad, Sami finds small ways to mark the distance. For Ola's latest birthday he arranged a cake, a gift and flowers through her brother in Gaza. The flowers could only be artificial, since natural ones are not permitted into the territory by Israel.
Every route he has found for getting Ola out has come to nothing. Her own plan now runs through education: she is applying for scholarships abroad, hoping a place to study might open a path to evacuation. On a trip to Mecca for Umrah, Sami prayed: "God, please bring us together soon."
The wider toll
The two couples' stories sit inside a much larger count. At least 73,783 Palestinians have been killed and 174,738 wounded since the war began, according to Gaza's health ministry. The war started with a Hamas attack that killed 1,200 people in Israel.
The findings of an independent UN inquiry, published this year, were that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza and doing so by deliberately going after Palestinian children.
For now, nothing has changed for either family. Wijdan remains in Egypt caring for her children without regular income while Hatem stays displaced in Nuseirat. Sami keeps trying to find a way out for Ola, who is applying for scholarships abroad in the hope that education might lead to evacuation.
