Echoes of a massacre: Tales from Israel’s attack on al-Tabin School

Sumaya Abu Ajwa had woken up for the Fajr prayer with her two foster daughters, 16-year-old Nuseiba and 14-year-old Retaj, and their mother.

She and the girls’ mother were off to one side when the missiles struck, one of them passing between the two girls, Abu Ajwa told Al Jazeera.

“Suddenly, dust and fire spread everywhere, like it was Judgement Day. I started looking frantically for the girls,” she says tearfully, sitting on a bed because she has difficulty walking.

“I found the younger girl [Retaj] and held her in my arms. Her blood was pouring onto my clothes, but I could sense that she was still breathing,” Abu Ajwa said, adding that she screamed for help, for anyone to come and save Retaj, but the scene was so chaotic nobody was able to help.

Soon after, Retaj succumbed to her wounds.

The search for Retaj’s big sister Nuseiba took longer.

“I went back into the flaming prayer room over and over, looking for her, I couldn’t see her anywhere. Then someone told me that she was under the rubble so I went to look where they said.

“When I reached her,” Abu Ajwa breaks down, “I found her and her body had been torn in two.”

Weeping bitterly, she said she and the girls’ mother had done everything they could, through several displacements, to keep the four of them together.

Abu Ajwa had discussed leaving al-Tabin with the girls, but Nuseiba had been reluctant to leave, she said, because she was attending Quran classes there and was proud of her progress in memorising the holy book.

“She told us that if we wanted to leave that was fine, she would stay behind in the school. I told her that I had stayed with them throughout the war and wouldn’t leave them now, we’d either make it together or die together, but now they’ve gone on ahead and left us. They died before us.”

The girls only had one wish, she added – for the war to end because they “have been scared so many times, displaced so many times, they were so exhausted and had gone hungry so many times”.

The girls have a 14-year-old brother, Abu Ajwa said, who had been taken from them when the Israeli army raided al-Shifa Hospital where they were sheltering at the time.

“The Israelis sent him north on his own. We were very sad then but, who knows, this may have saved him, he’s the only hope we have left.

“Who will call me Mama Sumaya now? I crave those words so much,” Abu Ajwa sobs.