No medical training could prepare me for a life-genocide balance'

"The man my family knew, the son, brother, and husband they laughed with, the father who played with his children, feels lost to them now. I call him the previous Talal. My children, wife, siblings, parents, friends and colleagues, they all see the change. They tell me I have become distant, quiet, detached, and sometimes hard to reach. My emotions are messy and raw in ways words often fail to capture."

"It is not a single feeling, but a swarm of emotions that is not going away despite the news of a ceasefire and reassurances of reconstruction. After witnessing human tragedy of indescribable proportions, I still feel anger bubbling at the injustice of it all, guilt for leaving behind the vulnerable, and a constant, aching helplessness at not being able to do something to stop this continuing annihilation."

"I still feel uneasy when I see a lavish buffet meal on a table in front of me, knowing people continue to starve in Gaza. The faces and scenes I have witnessed continue playing like a never-ending movie in my head: Starving children reduced to skeletons, parents who held onto body parts of their beloved children, completely charred humans, cozy blankets used as shrouds for human body parts, a bombed hospital, levelled buildings emitting the odour of decomposing bodies buried in their rubble."

It has been more than a month since a ceasefire took hold in Gaza, but killings have only reduced to a rate that allows international media to ignore them. A medical volunteer spent 22 days in Gaza working in hospitals and returned profoundly changed. Family members notice distance, quietness, detachment, and emotional rawness. The volunteer experiences anger at injustice, guilt for leaving vulnerable people behind, and constant helplessness at not being able to stop ongoing annihilation. Memories of starving children, charred bodies, shrouds of body parts, bombed hospitals, and decomposing rubble persist. The volunteer remains haunted by life-and-death clinical choices made under severe resource shortages.

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