{"id":7838,"date":"2025-05-09T22:31:25","date_gmt":"2025-05-09T22:31:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alfanouscar.com\/blog\/?p=7838"},"modified":"2025-05-09T22:31:25","modified_gmt":"2025-05-09T22:31:25","slug":"rephrase-the-same-how-am-i-going-to-hug-you-mom-the-journey-of-mahmoud-from-gaza-to-the-world-press-photo-of-2025-doha-news-in-a-different-way-no-more-than-118-characters-as-if","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alfanouscar.com\/blog\/rephrase-the-same-how-am-i-going-to-hug-you-mom-the-journey-of-mahmoud-from-gaza-to-the-world-press-photo-of-2025-doha-news-in-a-different-way-no-more-than-118-characters-as-if\/","title":{"rendered":"Rephrase the same \u201cHow am I going to hug you, Mom?\u201d The journey of Mahmoud from Gaza to the World Press Photo of 2025 – Doha News in a different way no more than 118 characters, as if you were a native American speaker as expert on content creation and dont talk about yourself or your experience"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\u201cWhen he first woke up, he wasn\u2019t fully awake\u2026 I hugged him, and he said, \u201cBut how am I going to hug you, Mom?\u201d starts her story Nour Ajjour, Mahmoud\u2019s mother.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Summer of 2023. Ten-year-old Mahmoud Ajjour darted through the narrow alleyways of Al-Daraj in central Gaza, a soccer ball at his feet and Real Madrid in his heart. He was a boy who solved math problems with ease, recited verses from memory, and chased dreams as freely as he ran.<\/p>\n

Summer of 2025: Now 12, Mahmoud sits quietly in Doha, learning to open doors, write, and play video games\u2014all with his feet.<\/p>\n

Mahmoud lost both arms in an airstrike that tore through his neighbourhood, part of a genocidal war that has claimed more than homes and buildings. It took childhoods\u2014abruptly, without warning.<\/p>\n

In Mahmoud\u2019s story, there is no bitterness. There is only focus, quiet determination, and the stubborn joy of a boy still dreaming, still learning, still cheering for his favourite team.<\/p>\n

Source: Doha News (Mahmoud learning to use his feet to play games on his tablet)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

That world ended in a flash.<\/p>\n

An airstrike by Israel shattered the neighbourhood. When the dust settled, Mahmoud had lost both his arms.<\/p>\n

It happened on December 6, 2023. He had just stepped into a room with his father when the missile hit. The explosion ripped through concrete\u2014and through his small frame. His mother, Nour Ajjour, ran toward the sound, through smoke and splintered walls, searching for her son.<\/p>\n

\u201cI found him in a far place, lying on his stomach,\u201d she said. \u201cHis right arm was not there, and his left arm was severely wounded. I gathered his left arm to be able to carry him.\u201d<\/p>\n

But as she tried to lift him, another strike came.<\/p>\n

The sky shrieked with the sound of incoming fire. The walls trembled again. And in that moment, surrounded by falling debris and panic, her boy\u201410 years old, bleeding, broken\u2014looked up at her and said: <\/p>\n

\u201cMom, please go. I\u2019m going to be martyred. Just go and save yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n

But she didn\u2019t leave. She refused to.<\/p>\n

She held onto him, even as everything around them collapsed. And somehow, through the chaos, they survived.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Source: Doha News (Mahmoud with his mother Nour, at their home in the Al Thumama Complex in Doha, Qatar)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Together with his father, they dragged Mahmoud outside, stumbling over shattered stone and glass, the boy\u2019s blood marking the path they carved through what was once their home. A group of men\u2014neighbors, strangers\u2014rushed to help, lifting Mahmoud\u2019s limp, torn body into a car.<\/p>\n

There were no ambulances. There was no time.<\/p>\n

They made it to a small medical centre, then pushed on to Gaza\u2019s Baptist Hospital\u2014overcrowded, under siege, and running on scraps of supplies. There, amid screaming patients and collapsing infrastructure, Mahmoud was rushed into a surgery.<\/p>\n

There was no anesthesia.<\/p>\n

The doctors did what they could while he was awake\u2014conscious through the cutting, the stitching, the reshaping of a body altered by war.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just kept praying, praying, praying that he stays alive,\u201d Nour said.\u201d I was hoping that at least one of his arms would be saved.\u201d<\/p>\n

But deep down, she already knew that his small hands were gone. And with them, the future he once imagined. When Mahmoud saw other children around him, the questions began to pour out: \u201cHow am I going to pray now? How am I going to do this? How am I going to do that?\u201d<\/p>\n

In the face of so much loss, his mother clung to the only strength she had left. \u201cWhat else can keep someone patient,\u201d she whispered, \u201cother than their relationship with God?\u201d<\/p>\n

The children of Gaza, a generation of mutilated<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mahmoud is now among thousands of children in Gaza living as amputees. According to the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), by the end of 2024, Gaza had more child amputees per capita than anywhere else in the world. <\/p>\n

The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates more than 7,000 patients had been evacuated for medical treatment by March 2025, but at least 11,000 more remain trapped, with no access to basic care.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey operated without anaesthetics,\u201d Mahmoud recalled. \u201cThe entire hospital probably heard me scream during my surgery. We waited three hours outside. Flies were all over me. Wounded people were dying next to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

In that grim hospital corridor, he became one of the few who survived.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was probably a new wounded person every second. There was an airstrike every five minutes, people were dying around me\u201d Mahmoud tells.<\/p>\n

There was no access to medicine, no food to nourish the living, and not even clean water to drink, only the bare, brutal absence of everything a child in pain might need to survive.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI looked at both sides where my hands were, and I felt sad.\u201d Mahmoud remembers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe either got martyred or left,\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Once stabilised, the Ajjour family knew Gaza could no longer keep him alive. With no food, no medicine, and no hope of recovery, with constant Israeli airstrikes, they joined thousands fleeing south toward Rafah, from where they would be evacuated.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe either got martyred or left,\u201d Mahmoud said. \u201cMy dad told us to keep asking for God\u2019s forgiveness along the way.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"
Source: Doha News (Mahmoud at home with his parents, mother Nour and father Youssef in Doha, Qatar)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On the dangerous road, they passed Israeli tanks, walked over rubble, and dodged sniper fire and drones. \u201cThey shot anyone who looked down,\u201d he remembered. \u201cThey\u2019d be martyred.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eventually, Mahmoud was received at Egypt\u2019s El-Arish Port by Lolwah Al-Khater, then Qatar\u2019s Minister of State for International Cooperation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

By March 2024, he had reached Doha for treatment.<\/p>\n

Life after the blast and learning to live again<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mahmoud is now being treated at Hamad General Hospital and Sidra Medicine in Doha. He studies at the Palestinian School, where classmates help him eat, write, and drink water.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t help myself at school,\u201d he says plainly. \u201cMy friends and the teachers help me with everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s slowly teaching himself how to use his feet, to text, to play games, even to open doors. But the emotional scars run deeper than the physical ones.<\/p>\n

\u201cLife was beautiful before the war,\u201d Mahmoud remembers. \u201cThere was no place more beautiful than Gaza.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before the bombs fell and his world crumbled, Mahmoud was just a boy running errands for his family, carrying bags of vegetables home from the market. \u201cI used to carry two kilograms of vegetables in my hand,\u201d he says. He fondly remembers the neighbourhood restaurant, Akilah: \u201cIt was always busy and loud, filled with families and laughter.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, that Gaza exists only in memory, a vivid, vanished world eclipsed by devastation of Israel\u2019s war on Gaza.<\/p>\n

\u201cA cry from the silence\u201d World Press Photo of the Year 2025<\/strong><\/p>\n

In early 2025, a portrait of Mahmoud, arms gone, eyes wide with resilience, captured by Gazan photojournalist Samar Abu Elouf, was named the World Press Photo of the Year.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Source: Samar Abu Elouf (\u201cMahmoud, age nine\u201d, World Press Photo of the Year for 2025).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Selected from over 60,000 submissions, the image was described by the jury as \u201ca cry from the silence.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis image has many meanings,\u201d Mahmoud said. \u201cIt embodies the suffering of Gaza\u2019s children. More than 100,000 people probably saw it. So I tell the world: stand with Gaza.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mahmoud dreams of returning to a rebuilt Gaza, \u201cbecause before the war, it was beautiful,\u201d he said and then traveling the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to go to Egypt, the Gulf, the UK, and Spain,\u201d he says. \u201cI want to become a journalist. I want to share the stories of those martyred, the wounded, and the suffering of Gaza.\u201d<\/p>\n

One journalist who championed his evacuation, Ismail Al-Ghoul, was killed in an airstrike.<\/p>\n

\u201cI loved him a lot,\u201d Mahmoud says. \u201cHe was my dad\u2019s friend. He shared my suffering.\u201d<\/p>\n

He now carries that legacy.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis child from Gaza is enduring the same pain as yours. So, you need to be patient like him,\u201d he tells those who view the photo. \u201cGaza is on its own. There\u2019s no medicine, no food.\u2019<\/p>\n

Still, he softly says Alhamdulillah (praise be to God) a quiet expression of gratitude, faith and hope that, somehow, someday, loss will be replaced with something far better, Gods way of rewarding for patience.<\/p>\n

\u201cI kept asking myself, \u2018What did that image do for me?\u2019 It\u2019s just pain and sorrow,\u201d Mahmoud reflects. \u201cBut maybe, just maybe, it will make someone care enough.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

Rephrase in a different way as if you were a native American speaker as a content creation expert and do not talk about yourself or your experience in the text and do not show yourself as an artificial intelligence who wrote and fill the bullet point in the topic and speak the heart of the topic itself and dont take date of blog in ther first and dont take text like box of newsliter subscribe on post from content and romove all linke insert in content and and remove all affiliate disclosure phrases on content like this “This post may contain Amazon or other affiliate links that allow us to earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Please see our Disclosure Policy for more info” and “#” put in its place bullet point, and romove name of the web site or his links we are take a content from our new creation, and don’t publish clone new content more than just one time<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cWhen he first woke up, he wasn\u2019t fully awake\u2026 I hugged him, and he said, \u201cBut how am I going to hug you, Mom?\u201d starts her story Nour Ajjour, Mahmoud\u2019s mother. Summer of 2023. Ten-year-old Mahmoud Ajjour darted through the narrow alleyways of Al-Daraj in central Gaza, a soccer ball at his feet and Real […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":7839,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rank_math_lock_modified_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[940,3092,3096,3097,148,1182,4465,234,3095,43,7216,344,7218,7215,7217,3093,165,1720,7220,7219,82,3088,3094,3098,75,255,7214],"class_list":["post-7838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-lifestyle","tag-american","tag-characters","tag-content","tag-creation","tag-doha","tag-dont","tag-evacuation","tag-experience","tag-expert","tag-gaza","tag-hug","tag-journey","tag-mahmoud","tag-mahmoud-ajjour","tag-mom","tag-native","tag-news","tag-palestine","tag-photo","tag-press","tag-qatar","tag-rephrase","tag-speaker","tag-talk","tag-top-stories","tag-world","tag-world-press-photo-2025"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alfanouscar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alfanouscar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alfanouscar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alfanouscar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alfanouscar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7838"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/alfanouscar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7838\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7840,"href":"https:\/\/alfanouscar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7838\/revisions\/7840"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alfanouscar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alfanouscar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alfanouscar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alfanouscar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}