A mother of eight in Egypt, a husband in a tent in Nuseirat

When the Gaza war began with the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, Wijdan Abu Matar was living with her family in the Nuseirat refugee camp. Ten days later, on 17 October 2023, an Israeli strike hit the al-Muhandseen tower near their home, injuring Wijdan and every member of her family.

• •Wijdan's daughter Nour, 15, suffered the most serious injuries, including a fractured skull and bleeding in the brain
• •Five-year-old Amna suffered severe burns to her chest
• •Nour spent about 33 days in intensive care with Wijdan by her side
• •Amna and Aysel, three and a half, were treated at a different hospital for 15 days

On 30 November 2023, Wijdan travelled with Nour to a hospital in Egypt for treatment, while the rest of the family remained scattered across Egypt for months. Her husband Hatem stayed behind in Gaza: he suffered a serious leg injury that limits his mobility, and he is now displaced in a tent in Nuseirat, where unreliable internet makes contact with his wife difficult.

'Both the mother and the father'

In Egypt, Wijdan carries the family alone. She has no regular income and relies on donations, while Hatem stopped receiving a salary 10 months ago and his injury prevents him from working.

She cannot afford transportation to send five of her children to school, and Nour still requires medical treatment that Wijdan often cannot afford to pay for. She says she has become both the mother and the father to her children, that the responsibility exhausts her, and that she is constantly worried about her husband.

The contact that does get through carries Hatem's longing. When he is online, he tells Wijdan that he is counting the days until he can see them again.

Wijdan says she has lost 35 members of her family in the war and is psychologically exhausted. She considers returning to Gaza but fears exposing her children to further suffering there.

A wedding set for November 2023 that never happened

The war separated a second couple before their marriage could begin. Sami Abu Tabaq, a 29-year-old Palestinian photojournalist, was forced to leave the Gaza Strip in April 2024, leaving his family and his fiancee Ola behind.

• •Sami became engaged to Ola five months before the war began, after meeting her when he chose her family's home as a photoshoot location
• •Their wedding was scheduled for November 2023, and the couple had spent months preparing the house where they planned to live
• •Early in the war, Sami and his family fled their home in Tal al-Zaatar, Jabaliya; their home and the couple's planned house were later destroyed

When Sami fled south with his sister and her children, he could not reach Ola to say goodbye. After a residential block near Ola's home in Gaza City was bombed, he asked his brother to check on her; his brother eventually confirmed that she and her family were alive.

The war followed Sami south. Four journalists who had shared his tent were later killed, including Hamza al-Dahdouh, son of Al Jazeera journalist Wael al-Dahdouh.

'You go, and I'll follow you'

As Israel threatened a ground invasion of Rafah in 2024, Ola urged Sami to leave. He paid a company coordinating exits at the time for both of them to cross into Egypt, but Ola could not reach southern Gaza. She told Sami to go, saying she would follow him.

Nearly two and a half years later, they are still waiting and have not married. In Egypt, Sami's life is dominated by loneliness, guilt and sleeplessness; he felt ashamed to turn on the lights or eat proper food while his fiancee and family were struggling.

Ola, meanwhile, completed a bachelor's degree in nursing at the Islamic University of Gaza despite the war. She has also lost much: her cousin, the journalist Ayat Khadoura, was killed along with about 50 other members of her extended family.

Sami keeps trying to be present from a distance. For Ola's birthday, he secretly arranged a cake, a gift and flowers through her brother in Gaza - the flowers were artificial, because natural flowers cannot get into Gaza as Israel does not allow them in.

His efforts to get Ola out have not succeeded; she is now applying for scholarships abroad, hoping education might provide a route to evacuation. Recently Sami travelled to Mecca for Umrah, praying for God to bring them together, and says he will wait for her for the rest of his life.

The war's toll

The two families' separations sit within the wider toll of the war. According to the health ministry, at least 73,783 Palestinians have been killed and 174,738 wounded since the war began; the Hamas attack that started it killed 1,200 people. Earlier this year, an independent UN inquiry found that Israel continues to commit genocide by deliberately targeting Palestinian children in Gaza.

For these two families, the immediate future remains unresolved. Ola is applying for scholarships abroad while Sami waits, and Wijdan weighs a return to Gaza against her fear of what her children would endure there.