Shadows of Hope: Mariam Who Gave Birth Beneath the Rubble in Rafah

Mariam had no idea that morning would change her life forever. She was preparing to visit her mother in another part of Rafah. Nine months pregnant, she stood at her door when the roar of warplanes echoed above, followed by nearby explosions that shook the soul. She trembled as she said, I was getting ready to leave when the shelling began, and the sky began to collapse over us.

The ceiling came crashing down on her and her husband, Samer. Everything fell in an instant. Mariam woke up trapped beneath the rubble, unable to see anything but suffocating darkness. Her body was bleeding, the pain of labor tearing through her, and she couldn’t move. She tried to scream, but her voice vanished beneath the dust of war. I was completely alone… all I wished was to hold my baby, even for just one minute, before I died, she whispered.

Time passed like a lifetime. After a harrowing struggle between pain and despair, Ghaith—her firstborn—entered the world. His first cry pierced through the deadly silence, igniting a fragile spark of light in her heart amidst that night of ruin. Her tears fell despite the dehydration, for life and death had met in a single moment.

Suddenly, she felt a hand touch her… It was Samer, her husband, miraculously alive, trying to pull her from the wreckage. A few days later, they fled to Jordan, but the wounds remained. Mariam could no longer walk due to a spinal fracture, and all she had left was a small child named Ghaith, whose eyes held the remnants of a shattered dream.

When we asked her about Ghaith, she said with a tired voice laced with tears: He is the only light I see now… the miracle that kept me alive. She looked at him for a long time, as if drawing the last bit of life from his presence.

As she gazed upon her child, Mariam recalled a poem that remained etched in her heart:

Faithful trees will bloom again,
They shed the dead when patience lives.
The barren earth of love will open,
And rain will come after drought.

This is not just one woman’s story. It reflects the suffering of tens of thousands of women in Gaza. Statistics show that over 50,000 pregnant women were directly endangered during the recent attacks, and 14% of them gave birth in unsafe conditions—under rubble, in tents, or makeshift shelters.

Mariam did not only lose her home. She lost the sense of safety. Yet, she gained a child who redefined hope in her life. As she softly concluded: His name is Ghaith… and Ghaith—rain—only comes after a long drought. I was about to fade away.

Because life does not end under rubble, Ghaith became the rain that revived Mariam when she thought it was all over. A story of birth amid destruction. Of hope triumphing over despair.