Survived Seven Bombings: The Story of Gaza's 'Aqqa'
Between loss and survival, Palestinian survivor Taghrid Al-Dalu endured a continuous sequence of shelling and destruction, moving between rubble and displacement centers. She emerged alive from beneath the debris seven times, but at each stop, she lost family members and relatives. From the Shuja’iyya neighborhood to the Al-Zaytun neighborhood, Taghrid was displaced 31 times in search of safety, her story becoming a testament to the magnitude of the tragedy experienced by families in the Gaza Strip during the war.
Taghrid’s family originally comprised more than 200 members, but the war of annihilation on Gaza reduced their number to just 10. In Shuja’iyya, a ceiling collapsed on top of family members, leaving her amidst the rubble alongside her mother, who was paralyzed and suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. Taghrid crawled while dragging her mother, searching for an exit, until they managed to reach a small opening that led them to safety. That was not the last time she faced death under the debris.
Taghrid continued her displacement journey from northern Gaza to the south, moving through several areas, including Abu Al-Atam and Palestine Street, but the shelling pursued her every time. In one temporary shelter, 12 people shared a space no larger than six square meters, before the location was turned into rubble. At Al-Shifa Medical Complex, where she worked in the blood separation department, she experienced another phase of the war, witnessing the siege and breach of the hospital. She recounts that her brother and two of his sons were arrested in front of their mother, before her brother was later martyred while in captivity, according to her account.
In Al-Nafaq Street, four floors collapsed on top of family members. Taghrid remained under the debris for about 30 minutes before rescue teams reached her. She emerged alive, but she lost around 20 relatives in that massacre. At another stage, her mother was injured by dangerous shrapnel and spent 40 days in intensive care before passing away, leaving Taghrid to mourn the woman who had accompanied her through one of the most difficult moments of survival.
In her seventh stop, Taghrid reached the Al-Zaytun neighborhood, where an entire residential block was destroyed, and she lost another brother along with his sons, reducing her family to just ten members. Throughout her 31 displacement journeys, the places she sought refuge in transformed from temporary stations of survival into markers of losing loved ones, until her memory became more associated with rubble and bombing sites than with the homes and streets where she had lived.
Today, Taghrid bears the physical scars of that journey in her body, including fractures, injuries, breathing disorders, and vocal cord fatigue, yet she continues to narrate her story and search for images and faces of those she lost. She emerged from under the rubble seven times and was displaced 31 times, while her family shrank from more than 200 people to just 10. These figures summarize the story of the “Phoenix of Gaza,” who survived death time after time, yet emerged from every pile of debris carrying a new loss and memories that still reside within her.
