'The word 'difficult' still has limitations': Ahmad Wuhidi grips memory of martyred mother on journey from Gaza to New York

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Last October, filmmaker Ahmad Wuhidi and his family were discussing their future in their garden when an Israeli missile attack destroyed their neighborhood in north Gaza and put them under the rubble for approximately six hours.

After waking from a 20-day coma, Wuhidi, who has also written for Medium and Palestinian nonprofit We Are Not Numbers, would spend the next five months covering the war on Palestinians in Gaza, all while nursing a fractured left elbow and grieving his most important mentor—his mom.

Though the 23-year-old, his father and younger siblings initially survived the attack, Wuhidi’s mother, Nisreen, was martyred. 

She was a United Nations worker, who was in charge of the curriculum at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) schools and is the reason Wuhidi continues to seek opportunities to better himself and to tell the story of Palestinians in Gaza. It's what she would have wanted, Wuhidi told Palestine in America.

During past escalations in violence, Nisreen would do whatever possible to make sure the Palestinian children in Gaza still got an education. Wuhidi is sure she would be doing the same now, if she was still alive. 

“She was inspiring us with her actions, without giving commands,” Wuhidi recalled. “She was dreaming and setting goals under the motto that education does not have limitations even if you are in a hot spot.”

As Nisreen’s oldest son, Wuhidi said he feels extra pressure to meet the goals and aspirations she had for him. It’s why he put on the press vest and started to report on what Gazans were dealing with.

‘A lot of heartbreaking scenes’

Wuhidi, who had been displaced more than five times before he evacuated Gaza, covered the war against Palestinians for five months. 

He was at Al Shifa Hospital when the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) attacked what was supposed to be a safe zone on Nov. 16. The medical complex, located in central Gaza, was the territory’s biggest, housing tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians at the time.

“I saw a lot of heartbreaking scenes,” Wuhidi recounted. “Bodies burned because of the missile attacks, lots of body parts, lots of martyrs and injuries in the central rooms of Al Shifa Hospital.”

He described his time in the hospital as the most challenging time of his life.

“The word ‘difficult’ still has limitations,” he said.

When the IOF approached the hospital, chaos ensued. Wuhidi and his family had to make the tough decision of splitting up. The first group would flee south to try and preserve the family’s future, while the second group would go to his sister, Mayar, who was in the ICU with injuries suffered in the October attack.

“We wanted to prevent Israel from wiping our family off the civil registry,” he explained.

But, Mayar died before Wuhidi or his family could reach her.

Still at the hospital with his press vest, the IOF soon surprised the displaced and injured Palestinians by blowing up a back wall and entering the hospital through it.

At the time the Israeli soldiers entered the hospital, Wuhidi was separated from his family but with other journalists. 

He witnessed the military approach journalists and demand they remove their press vests at gunpoint, according to Wuhidi. A soldier then blindfolded media members for hours. Wuhidi recalled hearing a soldier sarcastically ask a colleague, “Do you think you are real journalists?”

At that moment his body was shaking.

Although the IOF released the media members that day at Al Shifa, the experience shattered the illusion for Wuhidi that journalists in Gaza had any special protection from Israel’s bombardment.

“I thought the word ‘PRESS” would protect me,” Wuhidi said.

On the contrary, this past year in Palestine has been the deadliest for media workers since the Committee to Protect Journalists, an organization that promotes press freedom and protects journalists, began keeping track in 1992. 

Last July, Wuhidi’s colleague Ismail Al-Ghoul was killed by an Israeli bomb just after the journalist gave a live report on Al Jazeera. Leading up to his death, Al-Ghoul expected to be targeted by the Israeli military, according to Wuhidi.

“I know Ismail. He was knowing and anticipating being killed, just for telling the truth,” Wuhidi said. 

Refusing to be a victim

He said the Israeli occupation wants Palestinians to only be victims and numbers. But he refused that fate, ultimately fleeing south with his family on Nov. 16.

He remembers walking south for hours on Salah al Din Street with thousands of other displaced Palestinians while he carried his critically injured 10-year-old brother, Mohammed. 

There were military checkpoints throughout their journey. 

“The soldiers were pointing their guns at people and picking men, women and children, in an arbitrary way, to question and arrest them,” Wuhidi said.

It was a very dehumanizing experience for Palestinians, he said. If you were called over by the soldiers, they would force people to strip. 

After being displaced several more times while in the south -- and with Wuhidi’s compound fracture urgently needing care -- their family decided to evacuate to Egypt. Wuhidi was the first to get approved last March, but a week after he fled to Egypt, Israel’s military took control of the Philadelphi corridor and Rafah crossing, leaving his family stuck in Gaza.

Separated from his family and “lost” in Egypt, Wuhidi turned to the memory of his late mother, who was his first educator and who inspires him to fight for Palestinians who Israel killed, such as herself.

He spent the next five months in Cairo applying for film scholarships in the U.S., eventually receiving a scholarship to study in New York at The New School. 

He’s currently studying journalism and digital media and working on a documentary that will honor his mother’s life.

“Hercules would be inspired by her, because she was playing the role of the leader … even inside of our home,” Wuhidi said. “She played the role of friend for my [siblings] and me, a colleague to me. Even if I wanted to tell you more I can't. I miss her so much.”.