Now in Dublin, Abubaker Abed never intended to leave Gaza. When he did, it was not for his own safety. It was so his mother would not have to bury her son.
The Palestinian journalist was among the lucky few who managed to leave Gaza during a brief ceasefire in November 2023. He crossed the Rafah border into Egypt, carrying with him only a change of clothes and the unbearable weight of knowing that he was leaving his family behind.
He left Gaza because he had become a target. His reporting and social media presence had drawn attention. He had received direct threats. Israeli accounts were circulating his photo. Friends warned him he was next. Still, he hesitated to go. It was his mother’s words that changed his mind.
“She said she didn’t want to see me in pieces,” he told reporters. “That if I were killed, at least I would not be killed beside her and my siblings.”
He left Gaza to protect them. But in Ireland, where he now lives in exile, he finds little comfort in safety. “You cannot really tell me to enjoy something when I was deliberately starved in Gaza,” he said. “I feel like there is something absolutely wrong here.”
Guilt sits with him at every meal. He thinks of his friends still searching for clean water. His family, still counting the sounds of drones.
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His people are still enduring a war and for Abubaker, the nights are the hardest. His body may have left Gaza, but his mind has not. He still wakes at the sound of planes. In Gaza, that sound meant death. In Dublin1, it means travel. The meanings have shifted, but the reactions remain.
“The trauma doesn’t stop when you leave Gaza,” he said. “I still see the dismembered bodies of children. I still hear the cries. I still feel the hunger.”
Abed is one of more than 220 journalists who have been killed, wounded or forced to flee since the war began. He calls it a war on witnesses. “We are not just journalists. We are sons. We are daughters. We were looking for food while documenting death.”
One of those witnesses was his colleague, Hassan. A gentle soul, Abed describes him as. A man who gave up his home so others could shelter. A man who kept reporting even after losing family members, even after being injured. “He was killed shortly after we last spoke,” Abed said. “He knew he would be. But he stayed.
Abed did not. He left Gaza. And now, every breath feels borrowed. Every sip of water, stolen. “Imagine you are in South Africa. Deprive yourself of food. Have only one piece of bread a day. Then you might begin to understand our pain,” he said.
He left Gaza to survive. But survival is not peace. And exile is not freedom. He left Gaza. But Gaza did not leave him.
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Image credit: Democracy Now!
