Some traveled with their families. Others formed impromptu ones.

The Other War for These Gazans Is Against Cancer

Photographs by Laura Boushnak

Text by Laura Boushnak and Cassandra Vinograd

Laura Boushnak spent time with three cancer patients receiving treatment in Amman, Jordan, after their evacuation from Gaza.

Oct. 25, 2024

The skies were quiet and Mohammed Ashour was finally safe, but for days after leaving Gaza the 13-year-old was unable to sleep.

He had made it to a cancer-treatment center in Jordan, and the hope it offered, and yet he could not stop thinking about what he had left behind.

The two-bedroom apartment, for example, where his family had sought shelter. They had crammed into it with about 70 relatives after fleeing the fighting in Gaza, but when they left for Jordan, the stocks of flour were empty.

"What would the family who stayed behind have for dinner?" Mohammed recalls wondering during his sleepless nights.

Israeli officials said this month that more than 4,000 patients had gotten out of Gaza for medical treatment since the war began. But as of late June, more than 10,000 people in the enclave required urgent medical care that was available only elsewhere, according to the World Health Organization.

For the small number of Gazan cancer patients who like Mohammed are receiving care in Jordan's capital, Amman, that knowledge brings burdens. As well as their illness, they battle deep feelings of guilt, fear and homesickness.

When the Israeli military started bombing Gaza in response to the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, what Mohammed hated most, he said, was the sound of airstrikes. The smells after an explosion were also a problem, and would make his breathing difficult.

Mohammed, a top student, was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma before the war began, in January 2023. When the fighting began, his mother, Maha, was determined to get him abroad for treatment.

Even before the war, many Gazans were forced to travel for lifesaving medical care: The enclave's health sector had struggled for years under a crippling blockade by Israel and Egypt that intensified after Hamas took over. Getting out of Gaza, though, required permits -- a process that grew vastly more complicated and costly after the war began.

Ms. Ashour insisted that the whole family leave together, saying that she could not imagine abandoning her husband and other children. St. Jude Children's Research Hospital stepped in and helped the whole family make it to the King Hussein Cancer Center in Amman.

Before the war, the center had about two dozen cancer patients from Gaza. Last month, the total was five adults and 49 children, receiving treatment, food and accommodation.

Most of the patients are housed a seven-minute car ride from the hospital, on the fourth floor of an Amman hotel. That's where Mohammed has been staying, and where his mother has been preparing meals for him.

Mohammed's doctors advised him not to socialize too much after he got a bone-marrow transplant that compromised his immune system. But the smell of his mother's cooking wafts through the hallway of the fourth floor, drawing other children to her door seeking tastes.

They also come to take turns on Mohammed's PlayStation. He hid it in a bag when his family fled central Gaza, knowing his father would not have allowed him to pack it.

Ms. Ashour helps care for some of the other children, since not all were able to leave Gaza with their mothers. The fourth floor, she said, has developed a sense of community, a comfort amid so much uncertainty.

"Our destiny is ambiguous," she said. "Where can we go once Mohammed's treatment is over here in Amman? Even if we are allowed to go back to Gaza, everything is destroyed."

The same uncertainty eats away at another of the center's patients, Hussam Shehadeh, a 52-year-old man who is fighting Stage 4 cancer.

"I left the physical war behind, but I entered the psychological one," he said. "My whole family is in Gaza."

Information about what is happening to his family back home is often scarce. "Sometimes I can't reach them for four to five days," Mr. Shehadeh said. Hovering over him is a big fear: "What if I die without seeing them?"

Mr. Shehadeh left Gaza 20 days before the war started. Doctors there had discovered a brain tumor but could not treat it.

It pained him to leave his wife and four children behind, he said. But Amman was his only hope of survival.

"I just want to live a normal life," he said. "It's not my fault that I live in Gaza, where there is no health care for cancer patients."

In Amman, he underwent surgery to remove the tumor. That has affected movement on his right side. But the hardest thing about his illness, Mr. Shehadeh said, has been having to endure it alone.

His wife was recently able to join him in Amman, but he tries to call home as often as he can. He said he was troubled by how his 15-year-old son sounds, as if he had aged 10 years in a few months.

Transfixed by the news, Mr. Shehadeh, who was once the director of a cultural center in Gaza, keeps the TV on all day in his small, tidy room. That's how he learned about the deaths of three friends, he said. "We reached a point where we envy the dead ones," he said.

Mohammed Abdel Hadi, too, left his family in Gaza to get treatment in Amman, but the separation has been much harder for him: He is only 13.

A few weeks after arriving at the King Hussein Cancer Center, the boy known for his smile locked himself in his room and refused to come out -- or to receive treatment -- unless his parents came and joined him. (He had traveled with an uncle as his caretaker.)

The hospital workers were unable to coax Mohammed out. Only a call from his mother, phoning from the family's partially destroyed home in central Gaza, succeeded.

Mohammed was diagnosed with acute leukemia during his summer vacation in July 2023. It took around two months to get the paperwork for him to seek treatment in Jerusalem -- the first time he had left Gaza. He spent 35 days there before returning home to continue his regimen.

The war began a few days later, and Mohammed's family fled their home to seek shelter with thousands of others in school buildings. Despite the bombardment, Mohammed managed to attend a treatment session at a local hospital. "I was terrified," he said, recalling the sound of explosions and how he hid in another patient's room when a blast went off near the hospital.

As the fighting intensified, Mohammed's parents feared cancer care would become inaccessible, so they too decided to try getting their son, who dreams of becoming a professional soccer player, out of Gaza.

When the permits came through, Mohammed left Gaza through the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, with his uncle, Saadi Abdel Hadi. His parents and three younger siblings stayed behind.

After about a month of waiting in Cairo for the proper paperwork, Mohammed and his uncle made it to Amman on Dec. 23. There, he began treatment and enrolled in school.

While it was challenging at first -- classes are taught in English -- Mohammed said that he had made many new friends and that they cared for him. But Amman was not home.

"Once the war ends, I want to go back to Gaza," he said. "I miss the sea."

Hiba Yazbek and Natan Odenheimer contributed reporting.