A Wheelchair, an Oxygen Tank, and a Cart Pulled by a Donkey
From the earliest hours of the morning, 77-year-old Fathi Hajji begins a journey unlike anything patients would face under normal circumstances. Seated in a wheelchair with an oxygen tank fixed beside him, he is loaded onto a cart pulled by a donkey for a trip stretching from the Bir 19 area in Mawasi Khan Younis, southern Gaza, all the way to the Hind al-Deghma Kidney Failure Center at Nasser Medical Complex. Three times a week, Hajji makes this journey to reach his dialysis session. This routine has become part of his daily struggle for survival amid the harsh humanitarian and health conditions imposed by the ongoing war on Gaza.
A Life Uprooted From 400-Year-Old Olive Trees.
Hajji told Palestine newspaper that his body can no longer bear the strain of travel, especially given a fracture in his leg joint and his constant need for oxygen — yet stopping his dialysis sessions is not an option available to him. Before the war, Hajji lived in the Zeitoun neighborhood east of Gaza City, where he owned 45 dunams of agricultural land planted with olive trees, some estimated to be around 400 years old. The war left him with neither a home nor land: his house was bulldozed, and his fields and the olive trees tied to generations of his family’s memory were destroyed, forcing him to flee to the displacement camps of Khan Younis, where he now lives after losing everything he had spent a lifetime building.