Deir el-Balah, Gaza – Maysa Nabhan weeps silently in the living room, flipping through her phone for images of her father Khaled Nabhan with her children.
“He was everything to us. He held this family together. When my children died, he was the one who comforted me every day,” she says, her voice breaking as she scrubs tears off her face with her hand.
Eight-year-old Ahmed sat beside his mother, bursting into tears whenever she wept, only calming down as she stopped or reached a black-clad arm to comfort him.
“Grandpa’s gone,” he repeated tearfully, over and over.
In an overcrowded home where she has taken refuge with Ahmed, Maysa has little space to grieve her dad, who inadvertently became an icon of Gaza’s suffering a little more than a year ago.
‘Soul of my soul’
At 2am on November 29, 2023, in the shattered remains of Deir al-Balah, Khaled Nabhan cradled his granddaughter’s small, lifeless body.
An Israeli air strike had killed three-year-old Reem and her five-year-old brother Tarek, the two youngest children of his eldest daughter, Maysa.
Gently kissing Reem’s closed eyes, he whispered that she was “Ruh al-ruh” (soul of my soul) and the moment was caught on camera, making the 54-year-old grandfather an icon of Gaza’s agony.
It was a moment of peaceful surrender to God’s will that captured hearts everywhere.
Since that moment, more videos were shared of Khaled Nabhan as he navigated his loss and worked to help as many people as he could.
He focused on comforting others, even consoling people calling from around the world to offer their condolences.
When they would bemoan their inability to do anything to stop the bloodshed, he would ask them to pray for Gaza.
“There’s nothing more valuable than your prayers … pray for Allah to be with us,” he told a tearful caller.
A symbol
The world watched Khaled Nabhan be himself. He fed stray cats – traumatised and starving like Gaza’s population – and played with his surviving grandchildren and youngest daughter, 10-year-old Ratil, and took care of his elderly mother.
His son Diaa, 29, recalls how Khaled Nabhan kept working as a labourer whenever he could find work, despite being hungry and malnourished himself.
“He worked … scraping by to provide for us,” recalls Diaa.
“But you’d never know how much he struggled [during the war on Gaza]. He starved himself to make sure we had enough food.”
After his farewell to Reem went viral, Khaled “turned into a one-man relief agency”, Diaa said.
As love and compassion for him flooded in from around the world, he funnelled that support to those in need, collecting tents, food, and clothing for those left with nothing.
On the rare occasions when Khaled complained, it was about life in displacement and the humiliation it brought upon others as Israel continued to obstruct the entry of nearly all aid to Gaza.
“There is no greater indignity than this,” he said in February from the back of a horse-drawn cart that had his family’s possessions piled on it as he moved them to Rafah, their second displacement location that they eventually had to flee.
“People reach out to me for help who don’t even have the bare minimum of clothes to shield them from the elements,” he said.
Then, on Monday around noon, Israel struck again, bombing the Nuseirat refugee camp and killing Khaled Nabhan.
His funeral, 14 months after he laid his grandbabies to rest, was seen around the world in videos and social media posts.
Many users shared his photos holding Reem, commenting “now he’s gone to join her”.
That was little solace for his widow, who introduced herself as Afaf, 46.
“Khaled was a beautiful blend of piousness and fun,” she recalled tearfully.
“He was ascetic but didn’t deprive us of anything. He was a loving husband and father and a thoughtful human.”
“He gave us love, warmth, and hope.
“Even when the bombs were falling, he made us feel safe.
“Now, I just ask – why? And how many more innocent lives must be sacrificed?”
This piece is published in collaboration with Egab.
