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Palestinian journalist recounts family's escape from Gaza and the cost of exile

10h

Summary

  • Palestinian journalist Mohammed R. Mhawish has published an essay recounting his family's escape from Gaza and their life in exile in New Jersey.
  • His son Rafik stopped speaking and was diagnosed with acute malnutrition during the Gaza siege, and a December 2023 air strike buried the family.
  • The family left Gaza in the spring of 2024, spent a year in Egypt, and arrived in New York in the spring of 2025.
  • They settled in Paterson, New Jersey, where Rafik slept only with the lights on and a parent beside him.
  • Mhawish's friend, photojournalist Mahmoud Wadi, was killed by an Israeli drone strike in Khan Younis in December 2025.

Reactions

  • Psychoanalyst Lama Khouri told Mhawish that his son's symptoms are common among Palestinians who fled Gaza.
  • Rafik's teacher called Mhawish in on the boy's first day after he cried when zipped into a dark sleeping bag at nap time.
  • Friends greeted the family on their arrival in the United States with words of comfort like 'You're finally safe!'

Timeline newest first

  1. Earlier in 2025, after around eight months in Paterson, Mohammed R. Mhawish and his wife decided to leave and found a place in Queens, New York.
  2. In December 2025, freelance photojournalist Mahmoud Wadi was killed by an Israeli drone strike in Khan Younis at thirty-four, within forty-eight hours of a call with Mhawish.
  3. On the Fourth of July in 2025, fireworks over Paterson caused Rafik to tremble and ask his father whether the family had to leave.
  4. In October 2025, walking to school in Paterson, Rafik asked his father whether the family was going to a house with a plastic skull hanging from the porch light.
  5. In the spring of 2025 the family arrived in New York, and one month later Mhawish moved them to Paterson, New Jersey, a city with a Palestinian community.
  6. The family left Gaza in the spring of 2024 and spent an interim year in Egypt with Mhawish's parents and sister.
  7. On a December 2023 morning in Gaza, an air strike brought the family's ceiling down; Mhawish passed out and was pulled out by rescue teams a few hours later.
  8. After October 7, 2023, as the siege tightened, Rafik went silent and was diagnosed with acute malnutrition, one step below starvation.
  9. Rafik was born in Gaza in November 2021, in the wake of a two-week bombing campaign by Israel.

Sources newest first

  • My Family Escaped Gaza. In Exile, We Discovered the Cost of Staying Intactnewyorker.com· 10h

    In a New Yorker essay, Palestinian journalist Mohammed R. Mhawish recounts his family's escape from Gaza and the cost of survival in exile: his son Rafik, diagnosed with acute malnutrition during the siege, fell silent after an air strike buried the family, and even in Paterson, New Jersey, the boy slept with the lights on. Exile brought its own wounds — the killing of his friend, photojournalist Mahmoud Wadi, in Khan Younis; a mother stuck in Egypt undergoing chemotherapy; a stateless son born in Cairo. Psychoanalyst Lama Khouri tells him the symptoms are common among Palestinians who fled.