JERUSALEM — Among the children in the Gaza Strip who have survived nearly 11 months of war is a new generation of orphans and amputees. And then there is 8-year-old Sama.
Though she still has her parents and all her limbs, Sama Tabeel has lost nearly all of her hair to the unbearable stress of war. “I’m terrified of the shelling,” she tells NBC News from a camp in Khan Younis. She covers her bald head with a pink bandana that she rarely takes off and kills time by playing with a doll whose hair she braids, longing for her own.
Sama’s mother watches with a heavy heart as her daughter sobs through much of the interview. “Sama was exposed to horror, fear and panic,” said Olfat Tabeel, 33.
One night, they woke up to the sound of shelling on their tent in Rafah, Tabeel said. They escaped and ran to a hospital, where they were bombed again. Two or three days later, she said, “my daughter was combing her hair and she said to me, ‘Look, Mom.'”
Some doctors thought Sama had alopecia, but her hair had fallen out suddenly, not slowly. Another doctor gave her medication, but the side effects were too severe for an 8-year-old. Another suggested Sama should have a scalp analysis, “but these types of tests don’t exist in Gaza,” Tabeel said.
And real healing may require things even more elusive in Gaza: “More than one doctor told us it’s a psychological condition and anxiety,” Tabeel said, “and that she needs vitamins and healthy food.”
Sama, Tabeel said, was not like her other daughter. She loved her hair. “Before the war, she would stand by the mirror, comb it all the time and say, ‘Mom, give me a haircut,'” Tabeel said. “She drove me crazy with haircuts; she would do three or four haircuts a day.”
Tabeel said: “I often wake up in the morning and see my daughter holding the mirror and screaming, screaming.”
Sama has stopped playing with other children who bully her because she is bald. Her sister stays with her, wearing a bandana in solidarity.
Tabeel said that as they ran away from the shelling, Sama was shaking with fear and screaming that she didn’t want to die. “But now Sama tells me, ‘Mom, I want to die.'”
Months of violence, displacement, famine and disease have wreaked havoc on Gaza’s children’s mental health, according to a March report by Save the Children. Children have lost their appetites or started wetting the bed. Others have stopped talking. Before the war, some wanted to become doctors or teachers when they grew up, but their dreams have shrunk to the limited hopes of conflict, such as driving a donkey cart to deliver aid.
In 2022, Save the Children found that Israel’s 15-year air, land and sea blockade on the enclave had already had a devastating impact, with 55% of children in Gaza having suicidal thoughts, a situation only exacerbated by the war.
More than 40,000 people, including thousands of children, have been killed in Gaza since the war began on Oct. 7, when Hamas attacked southern Israel, according to local health authorities. About 1,200 people have been killed, 790 of them civilians, and about 240 kidnapped, according to Israeli authorities.
Tabeel says Sama is psychologically broken and there are few signs she will be safe anytime soon. A few days ago, she says, there was extensive shooting outside their tent and Sama woke up terrified and asked to be held, “so I hugged her and let her fall asleep.”
“Our house is gone, my grandfather is gone, my aunt is gone, I lost my hair and I’m afraid of losing any of my siblings, my brother, my sister, my mother, my father; I’m afraid of losing any of my siblings,” Sama said.
“She needs psychological stability,” Tabeel said. “Her mental state is destroyed.”
Sama dreams of one day returning to their home in northern Gaza to dig through the rubble. “I want to dig to find my toys, and the teacher’s gifts, and my dresses,” she said.
And she hopes her hair will grow again by her ninth birthday in October, almost a year after the war began.
If you or someone you know is at risk of suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at 800-273-8255, text TALK to 741741 or visit SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for additional resources.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
