What Will We Eat Today? Rami, the Boy Devoured by Hunger in Gaza

He sat slumped on a plastic chair in an Egyptian hospital, his frail body folding in on itself, as if his soul was searching for warmth it could no longer find. His name is Rami, a boy from Rafah, no older than fifteen, his face pale with the color of death. His eyelids sagged from exhaustion more than sleep.

I approached and asked how he was doing. One of his relatives, visiting from Egypt, answered: Rami arrived here after we carried him on our shoulders. He hasn’t been able to walk for days. All he eats is a piece of bread and a sip of water a day. His mother would split whatever she had between them.

Since his father was killed in an airstrike in 2024, Rami’s life—and his mother’s—became a daily fight for survival. Every morning, she would go out searching for flour, water, or scraps from aid trucks. In besieged Gaza, food prices skyrocketed, and bread became a dream.

I gently asked him, What’s the best meal you’ve ever had? He answered in a faint voice: That day… when a convoy arrived, I got a bag of rice and a can of beans… and some biscuits. He described it like a holiday memory. A soft glow lit his eyes for a moment, but it quickly faded behind the shadows of hunger.

I noticed he could barely move his limbs. One of the doctors said, Rami suffers from severe anemia and muscle atrophy due to prolonged starvation. We almost lost him. He was transferred from Gaza to Egypt with great difficulty, unable to stand. Thankfully, his condition began to improve slowly with intravenous feeding.

The hardest part? Rami once said quietly, It’s when your stomach screams… and you have nothing to silence it with.

In one heavy moment of silence, his mother leaned toward him and whispered, Forgive me, my son… I couldn’t feed you. But I swear I tried. And the silence that followed said more than any tears.

A volunteer added: Rami never begged for food. He begged for dignity—to eat enough to live as a human being.

As if his suffering echoed the words of Imam al-Shafi’i:

Be patient with bitter hardship from noble souls;
For dirt that feeds you is better than gold that humiliates you.

According to the World Health Organization, over 80% of children in Gaza suffer from various levels of malnutrition. In 2023 alone, over 14,000 severe cases were recorded among children under the age of fifteen.

When I asked what he wished for, Rami simply said, I want to eat normally again… and maybe run like I used to. Then he smiled—stubborn hope refusing to die.

As one old Palestinian saying goes: He who doesn’t have bread, has no voice. And perhaps that’s what Gaza keeps shouting to a deaf world.

This is not just a story about hunger. It’s a story about dignity being trampled every day in Gaza. And still, boys like Rami carry hearts far larger than their small frames—hearts that cling to life, and insist on hope.