POWERFUL TESTIMONY: Refugee Converts from Islam to Christianity During War

I need to tell you something and I don’t know if my   English is good enough to say it right.

My friend, he’s a Christian. He helped me write this down because I am not so good with   words.

But what I am going to tell you is true. Every word is true. I am not using my name.

I cannot use my name. My family, they are still there. Some of them.

And if they know what I am saying, if they know what happened to me, I don’t know what will happen.

So I stay anonymous. I give names. But they are not real. Please forgive me   for this.

I am nobody, just a father, just a man who saw things that changed everything.

But I have come to know that I am important in the eyes of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

I never spoke like this before. I never told my story to anyone except my wife and this Christian man I met.

But I believe I really believe that God spared my life not just to survive, but to speak, to tell what happened.

And so here I am. I don’t want attention. I don’t want money. I don’t want people to feel sorry for me.

I just want to tell the truth about what I saw and what I heard and what happened to me in the darkness when I thought I was dead.

So let me start from the beginning. Let me tell you who I was before everything fell apart.

I lived in northern Gaza my whole life. I was born there in um 1985.

My father was born there. His father was born there. We are Gaza people through and through.

Um I grew up in a small apartment in the Rimal   neighborhood with my brothers and sisters.

Three brothers, two sisters. We were poor, but we were happy. My father worked as a taxi driver.

My mother stayed home and cooked and cleaned and raised us. That was life. Simple.

Hard but simple. When I was a boy, maybe eight or nine years old, I remember the first time I heard booms.

It was during one of the wars. I don’t even remember which one anymore. There have been so many.

My mother gathered us all in the hallway, the safest place in the apartment away from windows.

And we sat there, all of us, holding each other while the walls shook. My little sister was crying.

My   mother was praying. My father was smoking cigarette after cigarette, his hands   shaking.

And I remember thinking, “This is normal. This is just what   life is.” And it was normal.

Growing up in Gaza, you learn to live with fear. You learn to live with uncertainty.

You learn that any day could be your last day. But you also learn to live, to laugh, to play football in the streets, to go to school, to fall in love, to dream of a future, even when the present is so hard.

I went to school until I was 16. I was not a great student. I was average.

I liked math. I hated English. Which is funny because now I’m trying to tell my story in English.

But I dropped out when I was 16 because my family needed money. My father’s taxi had broken down and he couldn’t afford to fix it and so I needed to work.

I started working in construction carrying bricks, mixing cement, whatever they needed. The work was hard.

My back hurt every night. My hands   were covered in cuts and calluses. But I was making money.

I was helping my family. And I was proud of that. When I was 22 years old, I got married.

Her name was Amina. She was beautiful. Long dark hair, kind eyes, a laugh that made everyone around her smile.

Um, she was my cousin’s neighbor and I saw her one day when I was visiting and I knew, I just knew.

I asked her father for permission to marry her. And after some uh negotiation about the dowy, which took months because I had no money, we were married.

It was a small wedding. We couldn’t afford much, but it was happy. So happy.

We moved into a small apartment not far from where I grew up. One bedroom, a small kitchen, a bathroom.

The building was old. The walls were cracked.   The electricity went out all the time.

But it was ours. Amina made it beautiful. She hung curtains. She put rugs on the floor.

She decorated with whatever she could find or make. And I worked I worked every day, sometimes 12 to 14 hours a day to provide for us.

Our first son was born in 2014. We named him Omar, who was perfect. 10 fingers, 10   toes, a full head of black hair.

When I held him for the first time, I cried. I had never felt love like that before.

It was overwhelming.   I looked at this tiny human and I thought, I will do anything for you.

I will protect you. I will give you a better life than I had. But Gaza is Gaza and protecting your children in Gaza is almost impossible.

Omar was only a few months old when the 2014   war started. 50 days of bombing, 50 days of terror.

We stayed in the apartment because we had nowhere else to go. Every time a bomb fell nearby, I would cover Omar and Amina with my body.

I would pray to Allah. I would say, “Please, not my family. Please, not my son.”

And we survived. Somehow we survived. Our second   son was born in 2016. We named him Khalil.

He was different from Omar. Omar was quiet, serious, thoughtful. Khalil was loud, energetic, always moving, always getting into trouble.

I mean, I used to joke that Khalil   was punishment for all the trouble I caused as a child.

And maybe she was right. But I loved him. I loved   both my boys so much it hurt.

And then in 2019, our daughter was born. Leila, my little Ila. She had her mother’s eyes and her mother’s smile.

From the moment she could talk, she was singing. Always singing made up songs. Songs she heard on TV, songs from school.

She would sing while she played, while she ate, while she bathed. And even when I was exhausted   from work, even when I was stressed about money, hearing her sing uh made everything okay.

I was not a perfect father. I worked too much. I was tired   all the time.

I lost my temper sometimes when the boys fought or when Leila wouldn’t go to bed.

But I loved my children. I loved my wife. And I tried. I really tried to give them a good life.

By 2023, things in Gaza were getting worse. The economy was collapsing. There was no work.

The construction projects dried up. I started working in the   market instead selling vegetables.

I would wake up at 4:00 in the morning and go to the wholesale market to buy produce   and then I would sell it from a small stand near our neighborhood.

Some days I made good money. Most days   I barely made enough to buy food for dinner.

But I kept going. What else could I do? I was a faithful Muslim my whole life.

I prayed five times a day or at least   I tried to. Sometimes I was too tired.

Sometimes I forgot. But I believed in Allah. I fasted during Ramadan every year. Even when   I was working in the sun and my body was weak from hunger and thirst.

I believe that if I was faithful, if I followed the rules, Allah would bless me.

He would protect my family. He would provide. But I also believed Allah was far away, distant, watching from above.

But not really involved in my life. I prayed because that’s what you do. That’s what my father did.

That’s what every man I knew did. But I never felt close to Allah. I never felt like he heard me.

I just went through the motions and hoped it was enough. I had friends, not many but a few men I had grown up with, men I worked with.

We would sit together in the evenings and drink tea and smoke shisha and talk about life.

We complained about the government, about Hamas, about Israel, about Egypt, about everyone. We talked about football.

We talked about our families. We dreamed about leaving Gaza, about going to Europe or the Gulf and finding real work, making real money.

But they were just dreams. We knew we were trapped. We knew we would probably die in Gaza.

One of my closest friends was named Samir. He was a teacher before the   schools closed.

Now he drove a motorcycle taxi to to make money. He had four children and a wife who   was sick.

He was always stressed, always worried. But he made jokes. He made everyone laugh. I remember one night we were sitting together and he said, “You know what I want?

I want to live one day. Just one day where I don’t have to worry about money or bombs or my children’s future.

Just one day of peace.” And I said, “Brother, if you find that day, take me with you.”

And we laughed, but it was a sad   laugh because we both knew that day would never come.

My boys went to school. Omar was 9 years old in 2023. He was in fourth grade.

He was smart, loved to read, he wanted to be a doctor. I didn’t know how to tell him that becoming a doctor in Gaza was almost   impossible.

That even if he studied hard and passed all his exams, there was no future here.

But I didn’t tell him. I let him dream. Khalil was seven in second grade.

He hated school. He wanted to play football all day. He talked about becoming an a professional player playing for Real Madrid or   Barcelona.

And again, I didn’t tell him the truth. I just said, “Inshallah, my son, if Allah wills it.”

Leila was 4 years old. She didn’t go to school yet. She stayed home with Amina.

She was shy around strangers but loud and wild at home. She loved to help her mother cook.

She would stand on a stool next to Amina and stir the pot or knead the dough and she would sing the whole time.

Amina would smile and kiss her head and say, “You are my sunshine, Habibi.” Life was hard, but it was life.

We had food most days. We had a roof over our heads. We had each other and I thought this is enough.

This is what life is. I work. I provide. I pray. I hope for something better.

I didn’t know that everything was about to fall apart. October 7th, 2023.   That was the day everything changed.

I was at the market that morning. I had just set up my stand when I started hearing explosions.

At first I thought it was the usual Israeli air strikes in response to something, but then I heard gunfire.

Close. Too   close. People started running. Someone shouted that Hamas had crossed into Israel.

That there was fighting everywhere. I left my stand and ran home. I didn’t care about the vegetables.

I didn’t care about the money.   I just needed to get to my family.

When I got home, Amina was sitting on the floor with the children holding them close.

She looked at me and said, “What’s happening?” And I said, “I don’t know, but it’s bad.”

We stayed inside that day. We heard helicopters,   gunfire, explosions. The news was chaotic.

Some channels said Hamas had won a great victory. Some said Israel was coming with a massive response.

I didn’t know what to believe. I just held my family and waited. The next day, the bombing started.

And it didn’t   stop. The first bomb that hit near our building. I thought the world was   ending.

It was around 2:00 in the afternoon. The boys were doing homework.   Leila was playing with her dolls.

Amina was cooking. And then the sound, that sound like the sky was being ripped apart.

And then the blast. The windows exploded. Glass flew everywhere. Ila screamed. Omar covered his head.

Khalil was crying. Amina grabbed Ila and pulled her to the corner. I grabbed the boys and we all huddled together in the hallway   away from the windows.

The building shook. Dust fell from the ceiling. I could hear people screaming outside, people running.

And then another explosion and another. I covered my children with my body and I prayed.

I prayed like I had   never prayed before. Allah protect us. Allah save us.

Allah please. When the bombing stopped, I went to check the damage. Two windows were completely shattered.

The door to our apartment was blown off its hinges. There was glass and debris everywhere.

But we were alive. We were okay. I went outside. The building next to ours, three buildings down, was destroyed.

Completely destroyed. Just a pile of rubble. People were digging through the rubble with their bare hands, looking for survivors.

I ran over to help. We pulled out a woman. She was dead. We pulled out a child.

He was dead. We kept digging. We found the man alive but badly injured. We carried him to a car and someone drove him to the hospital.

I went back to my   apartment. My hands were covered in blood and dust.

Amina looked at me and didn’t   say anything. She just took my hands and washed them.

And then she held me and I cried. I cried because I didn’t know what to do.

I didn’t know how to protect my family. I didn’t know how to stop this.

The electricity went out that night. The water stopped running the next day. We had some bottles of water stored, but not much.

We had some food, rice, lentils, canned tomatoes, but not enough to last more than a few days.

And the bombing continued day and night, non-stop. Ila stopped singing. She stopped playing. She just sat in the corner, silent, staring at nothing.

Omar tried to be brave. He tried to help. He would comfort Khalil   when he cried.

He would help his mother clean up the glass. But I could see the fear in his eyes.

Khalil had nightmares every   night. He would wake up screaming and Amina would hold him until he fell back asleep.

I couldn’t provide for them. The market was destroyed. The shops were closed. There was no work.

No money. And even if I had money, there was nothing to buy. The borders were closed.

Nothing   was coming in. We were trapped. I prayed five times a day. I recited the Quran.

I begged Allah for help. But I felt nothing, just silence, just emptiness. On the third day of the bombing, they dropped leaflets from planes.

The leaflets said everyone in northern Gaza had   to evacuate. We had to move south to Kan Ununice or Rafa.

If we stayed, we would be in danger. They said this was for our safety.

I didn’t want to leave. This was my home. This was where I was born, where I grew up, where my children were born.

But Amina said, “We have   to go. If we stay, we will die.” And I knew she was right.

We packed whatever we could carry. Clothes, blankets, a little bit of food, Amina’s gold jewelry that her mother had given her when we got married, the only thing of value we had left.

I locked the door to our apartment, and I looked back at it one last time.

I looked at the place where my children had taken their first steps,   where we had celebrated birthdays and holidays, where we had built our life.

And I knew I knew we were never coming back. We joined thousands of people walking south.

It was chaos. Families, old people, children, babies, everyone walking. Some people had cars, but most were on foot.

The roads were packed. People were pushing, shoving, crying, praying. The sun was so hot.

It was October, but it felt like summer. And there   was no water. Khalil kept asking for water.

Baba, I’m thirsty. Baba, please. And I had nothing to give him. I had one small bottle of water and I gave each of my children a sip.

And then it was gone. We walked for hours. My feet were bleeding. Amina was carrying and I could see she was getting weak.

Omar and Khalil held my hands and they   kept asking, “How much longer, Baba?

When will we get there? And I said, “Soon, habibis, soon.” We saw bodies   on the road.

I don’t want to describe them, but I have to because you need to know.

You need to understand   what we saw. There was a man lying face down in the dirt, half his   body missing.

There was a child maybe five or 6 years old sitting next to the body of his mother crying, calling for her, shaking her, trying to wake her up.

There was an old woman who had collapsed from exhaustion. And people just walked past her because they couldn’t stop.

They had to keep moving. Omar saw these things. Khalil saw these things. Leila saw these things.

And there was nothing I could do to protect them from it. I couldn’t cover their eyes.

I couldn’t shield them. We just had to keep walking. We spent the first night on the side of the road.

No shelter, no food, no water. We just lay down on the dirt and tried to sleep.

But there was no sleep. The bombing continued. We could see flashes of light in the distance, hear the explosions.

Babies were crying. Children were whimpering. Adults were praying.   I held my family close.

I whispered to them, “It’s okay. We’re going   to be okay.” But I didn’t believe it.

I didn’t believe we would be okay. The next day, we continued walking. More people joined the road.

More   bodies appeared. I saw a man carrying his dead son in his arms,   walking, not knowing where to go, just walking.

I saw a woman sitting on the side of the road, rocking back and forth, her eyes empty, her mind gone.

We finally reached Rafa on the second day. We thought maybe it would be better.

We thought maybe there would be help, shelter, food, but it was not better. It was worse.

The refugee camps   were packed. Tents everywhere, so close together you couldn’t walk between them.

There was no space, no privacy. We found a small tent, maybe 3 m by 3 m, and we shared it with another family, a man, his wife, and their three children, eight people in a space meant for two.

The smell was unbearable. Sewage, sweat, sickness. The heat inside the tent was suffocating. During the day, it was so hot we could barely breathe.

At night, it was cold. We had two thin blankets   for all of us.

The aid trucks came sometimes. When they did, it was madness. Hundreds of people rushing, pushing, fighting for food.

I saw men hit each other over a bag of flour. I saw women cry because they couldn’t get milk for their babies.

I fought, too. I pushed and shoved and grabbed whatever I could get. I’m not proud of it, but my children were hungry.

My wife was hungry. What else was I supposed to do? We got some rice, some canned   beans, a small bag of flour.

It was enough for maybe 2 days, maybe. We rationed it carefully. We ate once a day, sometimes less.

The children cried from hunger. Leila’s ribs started showing. Khalil’s face became thin. Omar stopped complaining.

He just accepted it. The water was dirty, brown, murky water from tanks that who knows where it came from.

But we had no choice. We drank it. We used it to cook. We used it to wash.

And then Ila got sick. She started with diarrhea, then fever, then vomiting. She was so weak she couldn’t stand.

Amina held her day and night, trying to cool her fever with wet cloth, trying to get her to drink water.

But Ila kept getting worse. I took her to a makeshift clinic. It was just a tent with a few doctors and nurses   who were overwhelmed, exhausted, running out of supplies.

The doctor looked at Ila and said, “She has an infection. She needs antibiotics.” But we don’t have any.

I begged him. I got on my knees and begged him to help my my daughter and he   said, “I’m sorry.

There’s nothing I can do.” I went back to the tent. I held my little girl.

She was burning with fever. Her eyes were half closed. She wasn’t singing anymore. She wasn’t even crying.

She was just fading. And I prayed. I prayed to Allah with everything   in me.

I said, “Allah, please. She is innocent. She has done nothing wrong. Please save her.

Please.” But I felt nothing.   Just silence. Amina stopped eating. She gave her portions to the children.

She said she wasn’t hungry, but I knew I knew she was starving   herself so they could eat.

And one day she fainted. She just collapsed in the tent. Her eyes rolled back and she fell.

I thought she was dead. I thought I had lost her. I screamed. I shook her.

And then she woke up. She looked at me and said, “I’m okay. I’m okay.”

But she wasn’t okay. She was dying. Slowly dying. I felt helpless. Completely helpless. I am the father.

I am the husband. I am supposed to protect my family, to provide for them, to keep them safe.

And I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t stop   the bombs. I couldn’t find food.

I couldn’t get medicine. I couldn’t save my daughter. I couldn’t feed my wife. I was useless.

I prayed five times a day. I recited Quran. I begged Allah for help. But there was only silence.

And I started to wonder. I started to wonder if Allah even heard me, if he even cared, or if we were just, abandoned, forgotten, left to die in this hell.

And then the air strike happened. It was night, late, maybe 2 or 3:00 in the morning.

Everyone was asleep. I was lying awake as usual, staring at the top of the tent, thinking about how we were going to survive another day.

And then I heard it, that sound, the sound of a plane, and then the whistle,   the whistle of a bomb falling.

I knew, I knew it was close. I jumped up and threw myself over my children.

I covered Omar and Khalil and Ila with my body and then the explosion. The blast was so close I felt the heat.

The shock wave threw the tent down on top of us. Everything went black. Dust, smoke, screaming.

I couldn’t see. I couldn’t breathe. I tried to move, but something was on top of me.

Something heavy. And then I felt pain, sharp, terrible pain in my head. And then everything went quiet.

I don’t know how to describe what happened next. I felt my body, but I also felt like I   was separate from it.

Like I was being pulled out, lifted up away. The pain stopped. The noise stopped.

Everything   just stopped. I was in darkness, complete darkness. But it wasn’t scary. It was peaceful.

And I heard a voice, not with my ears, not outside of me, but inside me, deep inside.

The voice said, “Don’t be afraid. You are   not alone. And I felt it.

I felt a presence, warm, loving, overwhelming, like someone was holding me, like I was safe.

And for the first time in months, maybe years, I felt peace. Real peace. I don’t know how long I was in that place.

Time didn’t exist there. But then I started hearing sounds   again, voices, shouting, and I felt pain, sharp pain in my head.

And I opened my eyes. I was lying on a mat in a makeshift clinic.

There were people around me talking, moving. Someone was wrapping my head with bandages. I could feel blood sticky and warm.

My ears were ringing. Everything was blurry. I tried to sit up. I tried to speak.

And then I remembered my family, my children. Amina, I started screaming. Where are they?

Where is my family? My children. A nurse, a young woman with tired eyes, put her hand on my shoulder and said, “They’re alive.

They’re outside. You’re okay. They’re okay.” I tried to stand, but my legs wouldn’t work.

The nurse said, “You need to rest. You hit your head. You lost a lot   of blood.”

But I didn’t care. I needed to see them. I needed to know they were really okay.

She helped me outside. And there   they were. Amina sitting on the ground holding Ila.

Omar and Khalil   next to her. They were covered in dust, their clothes torn, their faces stre with tears, but they were alive.

I fell to my knees   in front of them. I pulled them all close and I wept.

I wept like a child. And Amina was crying and the children were crying and we just held each other.

But something had changed in me. Something had shifted because in that moment of darkness, in that moment when I thought I was dying, I heard something.

I felt something. And I didn’t know what it was, but it was real. More real than anything I had ever experienced.

The days after the air strike were even harder. My head wound got infected. I had a fever.

I was dizzy and weak. But there was no medicine, no treatment. I just had to endure   it.

The camps were becoming unlivable. Disease was spreading. Cholera, dentury, infections. People were dying not from bombs but from sickness,   from starvation.

Children were dying. Babies were dying. And there was nothing anyone could do. Rumors started   spreading.

Rumors that Israel was planning a ground invasion into Rafa. People were panicking. Where would we go?

There was nowhere left. We were   trapped between the sea and the border and the bombs.

And that’s when I heard about the crossing the Rafa border to Egypt. People were saying that if you had money, enough money, you could get your name on a list.

You could pay the Egyptian authorities or pay brokers or pay someone who knew someone and you could cross into Egypt.

The price was insane. $5,000 to $10,000 per person. I had four people in my family.

That’s $20,000, maybe $40,000 or I didn’t have that. I didn’t have anything. But I had Amina’s gold jewelry, the necklace, the bracelet, the earrings her mother gave her when we got married.

The only thing of value we had left. And I took it. I found a man in the camp who was a broker.

He knew people at the border. He said he could get us on the list if I paid.

I showed him the jewelry. He looked at it and said,   “This is not enough.

Not for four people.” I begged him. I said, “Please,   I will get you the rest.

I will borrow. I will find a way. Just put our names down.” He took the jewelry and he said, “I’ll see what I can do.”

I borrowed money from anyone I could find. Friends,   acquaintances, people I barely knew.

I promised I would pay them back even though I had no idea how. I scraped together every shekele, every dollar, every pound.

And I gave it all to the broker. He said, “Your names are on the list.

Wait for the call.” We waited for days. Days that felt like years. Every morning I woke up thinking maybe today, maybe today we’ll get the call.

But nothing. And I started to think maybe he had scammed me. Maybe he took the money and the jewelry and we would never get out.

Ila was still sick. She was getting worse. Amina was barely conscious.   She was so weak from starvation she could barely move.

Omar and Khalil had stopped talking. They just sat in silence,   their eyes empty.

I felt like I was watching my family die slowly and there was nothing I could do.

I prayed. I prayed to Allah every night. I said, “Allah, if you are real, if you hear me, please help us.

Please save us. We are dying. Please.” But again, only silence. And then finally the call came.

A man came to our tent and said, “Your names have been called. Go to the border now.”

We grabbed what little we had. And we went. We joined a crowd of hundreds of people, all waiting at the Rafa crossing, Egyptian soldiers on one side, Hamas officials on the other, everyone checking IDs, checking papers, checking bags.

It took hours. The soldiers yelled at people. They pushed them. They searched them. They treated us like criminals.

Like we were dangerous. We were just families. Just people trying to survive. When it was our turn, they checked my ID, my wife’s ID, my children’s IDs.

They asked questions. Where are you from? Why are you leaving? Who paid for you?

I answered everything. I showed them papers, receipts, whatever they wanted. And then they let us through.

We crossed the border into Egypt. I thought that was it. I thought we were free.

I thought the nightmare was over. But I was wrong. We were taken to a holding   center in the Sinai.

It was a concrete building, old, cold, dirty. We were put in a large room with maybe 50 other families.

No beds, just blankets on the floor. The windows were barred. The door was locked from   the outside.

Egyptian soldiers came and told us we were temporary. We could not stay in Egypt permanently.

We had no status. We were refugees and Egypt did not want refugees. They took our fingerprints.

They took our photos. They questioned us like we were criminals. They asked about Hamas, about terrorism, about weapons.

I told them I was just a vegetable seller, just a father trying to save his family.

But they didn’t care. We stayed   in that holding center for 2 weeks. Two weeks of not knowing what would happen to us.

Would they send   us back? Would they let us stay? Would they put us in a refugee camp?

The children cried.   Ila was still sick. Amina was still weak. And I was broken.

Completely   broken. I had saved my family from Gaza. But for what? To bring them to another prison, another place of suffering.

I started losing hope. I started thinking maybe it would have been better if we had   died in Gaza.

At least we would have died in our home, in our land. Now we were nowhere.

We belonged to nowhere. We had nothing. We were nothing. I stopped praying for the first time in my life.

If I stopped praying to Allah because I didn’t see the point. I had prayed and prayed and prayed and nothing changed.

My family was still suffering. My daughter was still sick. My wife was still starving.

And I was still helpless. I was angry. Angry at Allah, angry at the world, angry at myself.

And that’s when I met Yousef. After the two weeks in   the holding center, they moved us to a different facility.

It was a larger building, more like a refugee center than a prison. There   were aid organizations there, Egyptian NOS’s, international groups.

They were distributing food, blankets, clothes. I was in line to get supplies when I saw him.

An Egyptian man, maybe   in his 40s, with kind eyes and a calm demeanor.

He was helping distribute the aid. He spoke Arabic, but I heard him   speaking English, too.

Perfect English to some of the foreign workers. When it was my turn, he handed me a bag   of rice, some canned goods, and two blankets.

And he looked at me, really looked at me and and said, “God bless you, brother.

Stay strong.” Something about the way he said it, the way he looked at me.

It wasn’t pity. It wasn’t sympathy. It was something else. Something I couldn’t name. I took the supplies and left.

But I kept thinking about him, about what he said. God bless you. I came back the next day and the next, not just for food, but because there was something about him, something peaceful, something I   wanted.

One day after the distribution, I stayed. I waited until   most people had left and then I approached him.

I said, “Why do you do this? Why   do you help us?” He smiled.

He said, “Because I am a follower of Jesus.” And Jesus taught us to love our neighbors to help those who are   suffering.

I said, “But we are Muslims. We are not your people. We are not your responsibility.”

He said, “You are people. You are human   beings created by God. That is enough.”

I didn’t know what to say. I just stood there. And then I said, “Can I talk to you?

Not now, but sometime.” He said, “Of course. Come back tomorrow. We can sit and talk.

And I did. I came back the next day and we sat in a quiet corner of the center and we talked.

I told him everything. I told him about Gaza, about the war, about losing everything.

I told him about my daughter’s sickness, about my wife’s starvation, about the air strike, about the darkness, about the voice I heard.

I told him about my prayers to Allah, about the silence, about my anger. And he listened.

He didn’t interrupt. He didn’t judge. He just listened. When I finished, he was quiet for a moment.

And then he said, “Can I ask you something?” I said, “Yes.” He said, “Do you still believe God hears you?”

I was honest. I said, “I   don’t know.” I prayed every night in Gaza.

I prayed in the camps. I prayed for my family and I heard nothing only silence.

So maybe he doesn’t hear me or maybe he doesn’t care. Yousef nodded. He said, “I understand.

I have felt that silence too.” And then he told me his story. He told me that   he used to be a Muslim.

That he grew up in a religious family in Cairo. That he prayed, fasted, followed all the rules, but he felt empty.

He felt distant from God. And then he met Christians who told him about Jesus.

At first he rejected it. He thought it was blasphemy. But they kept showing him love, kept answering his questions, kept pointing him to Jesus.

And one day he read the in jail, the gospel. And he read about Jesus healing the sick, feeding the hungry, comforting the broken.

And he read about Jesus dying on the cross, taking the punishment   for sins.

And then rising from the dead and something in him broke. He said, “I realized that God was not distant.

He came near. He became human. He suffered with us. And he died for us so that we could be reconciled to God.”

I didn’t know what to say. I had heard about Christians before. I had heard about Isa, Jesus, in the Quran.

But this was different. This was personal. Yousef said, “The God I know is not far   away.

That he is close. He is Emmanuel, God with us.” And when you were in that darkness after the air strike, when you heard that voice saying, “Don’t be afraid.

You are not alone.” Maybe that was Jesus. Maybe he was there with you. I felt something when he said that.

A stirring in my chest, a warmth. I didn’t know what it was, but it was real.

I said, “But I am a Muslim. I believe in Allah. I cannot just abandon my faith.”

Yousef said, “I’m not asking you to abandon anything. I’m just asking you to seek the truth, to ask God to reveal himself to you.

And if Jesus is the truth, then he will show you.” I went back to my family that night and I couldn’t stop thinking about what Yousef said.

I lay awake staring at the ceiling and I whispered, “Jesus, if you are real, show me.

I need to know.” And I felt that peace again. That same peace I felt in the darkness after the air strike.

And I didn’t understand it, but I felt it. I kept meeting with Yousef. Every few days, I would go   to the aid center and we would talk.

He gave me a Bible in Arabic. He said, “Read it. See what it says.”

And pray. Ask God to   open your eyes. I took the Bible back to the tent and I hid it.

I didn’t want Amina to see it. I didn’t want her to think I was betraying our faith.

But late at night when everyone was asleep, I would take it out and read it.

I started with the Gospel of Matthew and I was shocked. Shocked at how much   of it I recognized.

Stories I had heard before in the Quran, but with more detail, more context. And then I got to the sermon on the mount, Jesus teaching about loving your enemies, about turning the other cheek, about not worrying about tomorrow because God knows what you need.

And I wept. I wept because these words were speaking directly to me, to my fear, to my worry,   to my anger.

I kept reading. I read about Jesus healing the sick, feeding the hungry,   comforting the broken.

And I saw myself in those stories. I saw my family and I started to think maybe this Jesus was different from what I had been taught.

I read about his death, about how he was betrayed, arrested, beaten, mocked, crucified. And I thought why would God allow his prophet to suffer like that?

But then I read about the resurrection, about how he rose from the dead on the third day.

And Ysef’s words came back to me. He died for us so that we could be reconciled to God.

I didn’t understand it all, but I wanted to. I wanted to know more. Amina noticed something was different about me.

She said, “You seem lighter. What’s happening?” I didn’t know how to tell her. I was afraid she would be angry, but I couldn’t keep it from her.

So I told her, I told her about Yousef, about the Bible, about what I was reading.

She was quiet for a long time. And then she said, “I’ve been feeling something too.

I’ve been praying, but not to Allah. I’ve been praying to I don’t know who, but I’ve been asking for help, and I’ve felt something like someone is   listening.”

I pulled out the Bible and I read to her. I read the words   of Jesus, “Come to me all who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest.”

And she cried. She said, “I am   so weary. I am so tired. I want rest.”

And that night together, we prayed. We said, “Jesus, we don’t fully   understand, but we believe you are real.

We believe you hear us. Please show us who you are.” And we felt it, both of us.

That presence, that peace, that warmth. Ila started getting better. I don’t know how. We still had no medicine, but her fever broke.

Her strength came back. And one day, I heard her sing again. Just a soft,   quiet song, but it was the most beautiful sound I had ever heard.

Amina smiled for the first time in months. And I thanked God, not Allah, but Jesus because I knew I knew he had healed her.

I told you what happened. I told him that Amina and I were starting to   believe.

And he said, “Brother, this is just the beginning. Jesus is revealing himself to you.

Keep seeking him. Keep reading his word and he will make everything clear.” I kept reading the Bible.

I read the Gospel of   John and I came to the verse where Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.

No one comes to the father except through me and I knew I knew that Jesus was not just a prophet.

He was God. He was the way to God.” And I had been searching for God my whole life.

Praying to a distant deity, never feeling heard, never feeling close. But Jesus was saying, “I am the way.

Come through me. I talked to Amina about it. I said, “I think we need to follow Jesus.

I think he’s the truth.” She said, “I think so, too, but I’m afraid what will people think.

What will happen to us?” I said, “I don’t know, but I know that we cannot go back to the way things were.

We have found something real and we cannot let go of it.” And so, we made a decision.

We decided to follow Jesus. We told Yousef and he wept. He hugged us and said, “Welcome to the family, brother and sister.”

He introduced us to other believers, other refugees who had come to faith in Jesus.

Some were from Gaza. Some were from Syria. Some were from Sudan. And we started meeting together in secret because it was dangerous.

If the wrong people found out, we could be killed. But we met anyway. We prayed together.

We read the Bible together. We encouraged each other. And for the first time since leaving Gaza, I felt like   I belonged somewhere.

One night, Ysef said, “Brother, you need to be baptized.   You and your wife.”

Baptism is a public declaration of your faith in Jesus. It symbolizes dying to your old life and rising to new life in Christ.

I said, “But how? Where?” He said, “Leave that to me.” A week later, Yousef took us to a river outside the city.

It was late at night. There were maybe 10 other believers there. And one by one, we were baptized.

When Yousef pushed me under the water, I felt everything wash away. All the pain, all the fear, all the guilt, all the anger.

And when I came up, I felt new. Truly knew. Amina was baptized next. And when she came up out of the water, she was glowing.

She looked at me and said, “I feel free. We are still in Egypt, still refugees, still struggling.

We have no money, no permanent home, no future that we can see, but we have Jesus.”

And that is enough. My children are growing. Omar is 10 now. Khalil is eight.

Leila is five. They don’t fully understand everything that has happened. But they know that something is different.

They know that we have hope now. I work when I can find work, day labor, construction, whatever is available.

It’s not much, but it’s something. And every day I thank Jesus for giving me the strength to work, to provide, to keep going.

I think about Gaza every day. I think about the people still there. I think about my friends, my neighbors, my family members who didn’t make it out and my heart breaks.

I pray for them. I pray that somehow they will come to know the love of Jesus.

I don’t know why I survived. I don’t know why my family was spared when so many others died.

But I believe God has a has a purpose. I believe he saved me to tell this story to tell the world that Jesus is real, that he is alive, that he saves.

I want to end with this. If you are reading this, if you are listening to this and you are in pain, if you are suffering, if you have lost everything, if you feel like God is far away, I want you to know that he is not.

He is close. So close   and his name is Jesus. He is not a distant God who doesn’t care.

He is Emmanuel, God with us. He came to earth. He lived as we live.

He suffered as we suffer. He died as we die. And he rose again so that we could have   life.

I was a dead man walking in Gaza. I had lost everything. My home, my livelihood, my hope.

But Jesus found me in the darkest night of my life. And he gave me life, real life, not just physical life, but spiritual life, eternal life.

And he wants to do the same for you. All you have to do is call out to him.

Say, “Jesus, I need you.” And he will answer. I   promise you, he will answer.

I am nobody. I have no name. I have no platform. I am just a father from Gaza who found Jesus in Egypt.

But I am alive and I want you to be alive too. Jesus said, “I have come that they may have life and have it to the full.

I have that life now. Even though I own   nothing, even though I am still a refugee, even though I don’t know what tomorrow holds, I have life because I have Jesus and that   is enough.”

God bless you and may you find the peace that I have found. The peace that only Jesus can give.

Amen.