“It was silent save for the whispers of praise, the recitations of the Quran and the shuffling feet of some Israeli soldiers. All of a sudden, while we were waiting for permission to traverse the crossing that separates Gaza from Israel, they took my husband without reason!

“I don’t deny that I was in a state of fearful anticipation. Questions build in my mind and my heart began to race faster and faster. My eye continued to hurt me but I did not let this show. Fate had decreed that I would spend that night experiencing a harsh reality. Voices grew nearer and the shuffle of feet marked the arrival of the last of the soldiers. They had taken my husband to a faraway place, and later I learned that they had detained him.”

Um Yousef Maarouf lost all hope of treating her eye after the Israeli occupation detained her husband Zahir at the Beit Hanoun-Erez crossing in the northern part of the Gaza Strip last week. He was accompanying his sick wife because the only treatment option available to her was going to an Israeli hospital inside occupied Palestine.

Um Yousef arranged her affairs, grabbed her clothes and bag, gathered her remaining memories of the day her husband was detained and in a daze returned to the Gaza Strip without receiving treatment.