‘My Soul Went Dark’ – A Final Call Before a Bomb Took Her Father
By Shaimaa Eid
Since her father’s death, Hanadi has suffered severe depression and often spends her time sitting silently by the sea, unable to move forward with her life.
“My soul went dark.” With these simple but devastating words, Hanadi Ramadan Abu al-Khair begins telling her story, seated on the sands of Al-Mawasi Beach in Khan Yunis, southern Gaza, her voice cracking beneath a spiral of tears.
On this beach, now crowded with tents of displaced families fleeing the relentless Israeli bombardment, Hanadi scrolls through her phone. She pauses at a photo of Ramadan, her beloved father—gone but never distant—and whispers to herself: “He died a martyr. That’s my only comfort.”
Her story begins on October 9, 2023, just two days after Israel launched its latest war on Gaza. Hanadi, the only daughter of her father and his most cherished child, had just finished a long phone call with him when he signed off with the words: “Take care of yourself, my girl.” Moments later, that voice of safety and love was silenced by the sound of an Israeli airstrike.
“I heard the explosion in my ears,” she told The Palestine Chronicle. “That moment never leaves me. My soul has not healed from the grief.”
Hanadi’s father worked as a security guard at the Ministry of Finance in Tel al-Hawa, west of Gaza City. She told us he refused to evacuate the building, choosing instead to stay with his lifelong friend Hussein and an elderly couple living nearby.
“That’s what he told me,” she said. “He didn’t want to leave them alone when the city was already falling apart.”
She recalls the moment of horror with vivid detail: “That afternoon, I felt anxious and called him to check in. He answered, breathless, saying the sky was raining fire.”
Then, she heard him cry: “We’re surrounded, Hanadi. We’re surrounded. Yaba—” and the line went dead.
Hanadi breaks down again before continuing: “I heard a massive explosion, then the line cut. I kept shouting ‘Yaba! Yaba!’ but there was no answer.”
She tried calling him over and over, but no call went through. Then she read breaking news: Israeli airstrikes had hit the Ministry of Finance building in Tel al-Hawa.
“It felt like the earth stopped spinning,” Hanadi said. “I denied what I read. My hands trembled. I performed ablution, prayed two rak’ahs, and recited Surah Yasin, hoping my phone would ring and it would be him.”
“More than forty airstrikes,” she continued, crying again. “They bombed the Ministries of Finance, Awqaf, Telecommunications, and Transportation. Forty strikes destroyed the entire area… and killed my father.”
Hanadi’s family tried to reach the site, but civil defense teams and ambulances couldn’t access the area due to the ongoing bombardment. “Anyone who tried to approach, whether on foot or by vehicle, was targeted from the air,” she said.
Two days later, after all hope had faded, her husband and brothers set out to search for her father—or his body. It was then, as Hanadi told us, that a divine miracle occurred.
Her father, Hanadi explained, used to feed and care for a group of pigeons near the ministry building. The search team saw the pigeons flying in circles over a specific area before landing gently on a pile of rubble. When they approached that spot, they found his body beneath the stone.
Hanadi, the cherished only daughter among three sons, was her father’s pride. “He always boasted about me to friends and relatives. He used to take me along on his visits, introducing me by saying, ‘This is my daughter Hanadi—my heart, my soul, and the light of my life’.”
She remembered how he was there for her during the most vulnerable moments: “When I was giving birth, he waited for hours outside, praying and reading the Quran. He felt my pain as if it were his own.”
During a financial crisis she faced, he stood firmly by her side. “Every Thursday, he took me to a new restaurant just to lift my spirits and ease the weight of life,” she recalled. “He never made me feel like I lacked anything.”
Her father always encouraged her to be strong and unafraid. “When I had to deal with a legal issue, he supported me fully, urged me to be brave, and guided me through every step,” she added.
Since her father’s death, Hanadi has suffered severe depression and often spends her time sitting silently by the sea, unable to move forward with her life after being displaced from Gaza City.
She keeps hearing his voice in her mind—his final words—and remembers the missile that stole from her the only person who ever made her feel whole.
“Even if the war ends tomorrow,” she said, “even if we return to the north, there will always be a joy that’s missing. My father. I can’t imagine life without him.”
“I saw life through his eyes. I have never experienced pain and sorrow like this in my entire life,” she repeated, quietly.
(The Palestine Chronicle)
– Shaimaa Eid is a Gaza-based writer. She contributed this article to the Palestine Chronicle.