Humans of Gaza: 3-year-old Reem, grandfather’s ‘essence of soul’

He tries to open her immovable eyes to kiss them, rubs his beard against her dangling head, cleans her blood-stained face, and hugs her again and again before bidding her a final goodbye.

While describing his slain three-year-old granddaughter’s innocence, Khaled Nabhan said Reem was his “ruh-el-ruh”, a word that can be roughly translated as “the essence of the soul.”

As he explains the beautiful bond he shared with Reem, Nabhan’s face lights up with a strange smile.

Reem and her 5-year-old brother Tareq were both killed when an Israeli airstrike brought down their home after hitting the Al Nuseirat refugee camp in southern Gaza.

The family was asleep when the house was bombed by the regime last week before the temporary truce came into effect.

Nabhan said he woke up looking for his children and grandchildren, however, the absence of electricity prevented him from locating them in the wreckage.

“I couldn’t find anyone, they were buried underneath the rubble,” he said, pointing towards the debris of his destroyed house.

Reem’s mother Maysa was severely injured in the attack and is still recuperating.

The helpless mother heard her little girl screaming for help but failed to come to her rescue as she herself was buried under the heavy rubble of their house.

As Reem’s father works outside Palestine, the family was living with her grandfather Nabhan.

The grandchildren would most of the time be seen clinging to their grandfather. “We were inseparable, I loved her more than my soul,” Nabhan is heard as saying.