Where Pain Has No Bed

When I entered the hospital to visit my grandmother, I felt as if I was crossing from the world of the living into a gray realm where life and death intertwine. The walls were pale, and dim yellow lights hung from the ceiling. The hospital was nothing but a suffocating crowd—pale faces searching for a glimmer of life amidst the chaos.

In the hallway, the smell of iodine mixed with dried blood on the floor, and bodies lay scattered without beds. Elderly men groaned on the ground, women stretched on thin blankets, and children jostled for space in tight corners… as if the corridors had become wards of death, not of healing. I saw a wounded man bleeding silently, pressing his tattered bandage with his hand, waiting for a turn that might never come, as the beds were full and medicine scarce.

At the entrances, exhausted faces stared eagerly at every ambulance that entered, as if it carried salvation—but inside, it often carried only new death. The cries of mothers were more painful than the wounds themselves. A woman screamed, holding her son’s body wrapped in bandages, refusing to believe he was gone. Another whispered to her injured child, "Open your eyes, my love… I am here," while silence hung heavily over his face.

In a corner of the hallway, a father covered in dust revealed in his features that he had been running after aid. He returned to the hospital not carrying food, but carried on shoulders—his leg amputated, hands trembling. And others never returned… their fate delivered only in a black bag.

Doctors ran as if chasing time itself, and nurses tried the impossible with empty hands. Everything in this place screamed: helplessness, suffocation, deadly waiting.

Finally, I sat by my grandmother, holding her hand, but I no longer saw her pain alone. I saw all of Gaza on its white bedsheets, its land turning into corridors crowded with souls hanging by a thin thread.

Imagine yourself in my place… entering to visit a loved one, only to confront scattered bodies in the hallways, mothers’ cries melting your heart, and fathers suddenly transformed from life-runners into wounded or martyrs. Could you leave as you came?

Does a person still have meaning when left lying in a cold hallway, waiting for a bed that never comes? How do children welcome their father when he returns broken—or doesn’t return at all? And can a mother’s heart survive when her scream rises above her own heartbeat?

In Gaza… even the hospital is no longer a place of healing, but an open stage for postponed death.