834: Yousef and the Fourth Move

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As the war moved, he moved a second time down south to a city called Han Yunis. Then Israel dropped leaflets from the sky telling everybody to evacuate. Han Yunis immediately, get safety further south in Rafah. Yusuf packed up the car that day, his wife Manal, his kids, his mom, and made his third move. And this is around the time that he started having conversations with one of our producers here, Hana Jafi Walt.

He told Hana that he knew his sisters, who were in Han Yunis, needed also to go to Rafah. And he kept wheeling, arguing, pleading, making promises, wearing them down. And they still did not move. Until an airstrike hit the building next to them. Terrifying, right?

Yusuf raced to where they were. And as soon as they saw each other, Yusuf and his sister shared their relief by being exactly how they always are with each other.

This is how I'm with my sisters. And did they laugh? What did they say? Hadir was like, ah, you know. Actually, they would start to give me orders quickly.

You need to talk to our cousin, Ahmed, because he was hospitalized. You need to invite him. Also, go to our uncle, Ayman, because they.

Yusuf was facing moving everybody for a fourth time. And he's always been the one who's made this call for his family. Yusuf's the one who decides. It's too dangerous to stay where we are. And this is when we have to go.

It has to be now. And this is where we're going next. But this time, Yusuf didn't know where to go next. Keep everybody safe and together. And go as far south as you can go in Gaza.

There really might not be another place to run to. He told Ghana back then.

No, we don't have it right now. But I think I don't have options ahead of me. When I have.

But it's not an obvious choice for Yusuf and for lots of people as you're here.

Today, what happens when Yusuf gets pressed into a fourth move, one that he has deeply mixed feelings about and is not even sure he can pull off. And that's to try to get his family out as quickly as possible before Israel invades the city where they're living. Time, he knew, was not on his side. And if you think you can imagine what that entails, let me tell you, you really do not know the half of it. You're about to witness feats of ingenuity, strokes of luck, and big piles of cash on a deadline against enormous odds.

And also, you'll see how hard it is on this family to make this decision. How even trying to go, tears them up, tears Yusuf up. From WBEC, Chicago to Samaritan Life, I'm Ira Glass. And with that, I'll turn things over to Hannah. Yusuf did not want to.

So Yusuf had no plan to leave, did not even want to think about leaving Gaza. And then, one day in February, he found out he might leave Gaza. He was in the car with his wife Manal and their kids. I was going with Manal to her.

I heard my daughter, Elia, five years old, Elia, telling me.

Hi Manal. Hi. Manal, I've heard so much about you.

Me too, my dear. I've heard a lot about you. Manal says Yusuf had told her and his mother he didn't want to leave. But if they ever wanted to leave Gaza, he would make it happen. And Manal and his mom said no.

Their whole family is in Gaza.

We felt it was wrong to travel and leave them behind. And Manal knew, like everyone thinking about leaving Gaza knows, if she left, there was a good possibility she'd never come back. So no, she said she didn't want to leave. And she meant it. But then Manal thought, maybe?

The idea stuck to her. She thought of it when her children screamed through bombing, or when they begged for chicken instead of more canned food. When she noticed Ilya had forgotten all of her alphabet. And she thought of it when she spent the entire day looking for wood to boil water so her kids could drink. She worried.

What if they ran out of time? What if the Israelis showed up before Yusuf had another plan? Then Manal mentioned all of this to one of Yusuf's sisters, Aseel. Aseel is the sister who is most like Yusuf. Decisive, a problem solver, a planner.

I went to Aseel. She was the first to encourage me. She said, let the children live a good life. Go, leave. She encouraged me.

Honestly, Aseel is the closest to me because she's been my friend since childhood. I consider her like a sister, my favorite friend and the best friend I have. For her to encourage me to do it, that was very good for me because she knew what my interests were and told me my best interest was in leaving Gaza. I thought we should harden our hearts a bit and leave for the sake of our children.

The process of considering leaving Gaza in this war is not just one of weighing options, one item after another. It's also getting people's blessings. It's a series of permissions. There was. Aseel, gave her a blessing.

Eventually, the other sisters did too, knowing that they were not going to go, couldn't go. They had their own extended families and lives in Gaza. Yusuf's mom, after some persuading, agreed to go with Manal and Yusuf and the kids. So it was decided. Manal told her kids they were going.

And for her, that was the happiest moment, the relief of being able to say to her kids, this will end for you. They were excited, so excited that Ilya, the five-year-old, ended up breaking the news to her dad in the car before Manal even had a chance to tell him. So you're thinking about leaving? when? Soon?

And how?

I try to not ignore it, postpone it. Unfortunately, when I think about the decision itself, I get lost quickly because there is loads of details behind that decision.

It's really difficult. But making that decision is not getting along with my personality. It's not getting along with your personality? Yes. 160 days of war, and that wasn't enough to raise the idea in my head that I should leave Gaza.

Leaving now,

it's kind of, I'm escaping my responsibility towards my sisters, my responsibility towards my job, my responsibility towards my friends who I'm supporting. But I'm standing ahead of my responsibility towards my children. It's very,

I don't know, it's a very difficult decision if you put these two responsibilities.

He agreed it was the right choice for his children. And yet, everything about how this move was happening was different, slower than I'd seen Yusuf act through the entire war. Not that he was stalling. He'd made some calls. He was going through the steps.

But old Yusuf would have made a thousand calls, checking all the angles, calling in favors, urgently, reading everything available about what Israel might do next and when. And now, this Yusuf did not sound like a person who knows there may only be a small window to make your next move, and it's easy to be too late. But for me, to be honest, I'm not.

I will do it. I'm starting the process and all of that. It's a very long process,

Unclear. Another week passed, then another. Those blessings Manal had collected from everyone in the family, they meant it. But the longer this wait went on, the blessings got a little worn. Yusuf started seeing it when he checked in on his sisters.

And now you are objecting that. Then I found out at some moment that they were angry and all of that, and it's fine. I know how they feel about it. And I know how they are scared. And I believe they have the right to be scared.

It does feel me guilty. It makes me feel guilty. But I am already guilty.

He was not doing his job, keeping them safe and together. But while he waited, Yusuf really did try. on the safety front. He threw himself into making sure his sisters would be okay without him. there.

He lined up a million backups, a guy with a car in case they needed to leave quickly, a guy to help with broken phones, with internet problems. He told friends, I'm going to be calling on you. You need to look out for my sisters. He set up a contact at a currency shop so he could send money from Egypt. And he stashed emergency cash with several different people he trusted.

Every day Yusuf would notice a new deterioration of just daily life. There was no trash pickup, no police or services, nobody regulating traffic or businesses. There was no governance. One day he'd get a call that someone's mother-in-law used the shower when it wasn't her family's day. And by the time Yusuf arrived, the conflict had exploded.

Or another day.

And that was difficult. I had to intervene between both of them, apologizing here and there, trying to find, to mediate between them.

The circumstances and what we are going through is pushing us to become unstable mentally. So everyone's under huge pressure from the amount of responsibilities that you have to do, or just to move from a place to the other, just trying to get cash from a bank or an ATM.

Everything is very dramatic.

And that's affecting the entire society itself. People are fighting for no reason. Now, a few days ago, we had water trucking. So they had. a lot of humanitarian organizations have provided water trucking.

They send drinkable waters by trucks to these areas. We had a small dispute on the line where people put their jerrycans in line. A small dispute that resulted in seven people killed. It's as simple as that.

It's like 100 meters away and, you know, a lot of ambulances. And that fight is just a small line in front of drinking water.

So that's one of the things that's pushing me to know I have to rescue my children from that.

And if your name was on that list, you knew to show up at the Rafah Crossing the next day. You'd been granted permission to cross 300, sometimes 400 people a day. Yusuf and Manal's names were never listed. But Yusuf started seeing the names of people he knew had registered not long before him showing up on the list. By the end of March, he told me, it must be close.

How are you feeling?

So to a new journey. And unfortunately, until now, I don't have any, any horizon where I'm going. What's the plan?

Nervous, nervous, maybe.

There were, at the time, over a million people living in a city that was about to be invaded. There was one way out of Gaza. I wanted to understand what was this opaque process that Yousef was waiting on and could barely talk about?

Chicago Public Radio, when our program continues.

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I'm Julie Turkowitz. I'm a reporter.

This is American Life. from Ira Glass. Today's show, we're returning to Yussef Hamash and his family in Rafah, who've been caught up in this war that began October 7th when Hamas crossed into Israel, killed nearly 1,200 Israelis, took over 240 hostages, and has dragged on for nearly nine months now, over 37,000 Palestinians and over 1,500 Israelis dead, and people like Yussef and his sisters trapped in the middle of the fighting. And back in February, when Yussef decided to try to leave Gaza, leave all this behind, it was hard getting everybody on board, handing off responsibilities, but also it was just literally hard to leave. It was hard to get out.

Yussef was cautious when it came to talking about this part of the process, so Hamas started asking around, how exactly does it work? How did a person get out of Gaza with a clock ticking? Everybody wondering when and if Israel was really going to do what it announced it was going to do and actually invade Rafah. What procedure do you go through? Who do you call?

What form do you fill out to leave Gaza? Here's Hannah. You know it's.

You can just say that I'm one of the OCCRP.

They were for brokers, people calling themselves travel agents or travel coordinators. Naya pulled up a couple of the ads while we were talking. Travel in luxury, your dignity and pride intact. And really, I mean, it's like they're so creepy.

It was very funny. Okay, there's one called The King's Coordinations. It says the strongest coordination on the level of Gaza. And then it says easy and guaranteed. And it has a photo of the Sphinx and then a plane over that Sphinx and then a guy looking very modern, you know, wearing a rucksack on his back and orange jeans.

It looks so funny.

And the price rose over time. A few months after the war started, we called one of the brokers ourselves and asked what exactly is the price now? And he said, sometimes it's $7,000, $10,000 or $12,000.. $12,000 per person. An astounding number.

Before the war started, the average person in Gaza made $3,700 a year. It was very difficult for Palestinians trying to leave to tell who was legit or to price shop. People gave their money to brokers who disappeared. It was the Wild West. And then the entire system changed.

Egypt controls the Rafah crossing. Here are some things Egypt did not want. Egypt did not want Israel pushing Palestinians from Gaza into Egypt. It didn't want a refugee crisis. It didn't want Hamas getting a foothold in Egypt.

Egypt also didn't want to look like it was supporting the displacement of Palestinians by facilitating their exit out of Gaza. And last, Egypt definitely did not want to look like it was collaborating in a black market to charge Palestinians tens of thousands of dollars to save their lives. By the beginning of this year, it did look like that. By February and March, there were reports that the main company offering travel coordination at the Rafah border was making a million dollars a day off Palestinians. The manic economy was reined in.

New rules. No more hiring brokers in Gaza to help you register to leave. No more paying by phone. No more free-for-all bribes at the border. There would only be one company allowed to register people to leave Gaza.

An Egyptian company called Hala, with close ties to the Egyptian military and security services. And now, if you wanted to register, you needed to send someone to the Hala offices in Cairo, in person. And not just anyone, a first-degree relative. And you'd need to pay in cash. $5,000 for an adult, $2,500 for a kid.

American dollars only. It's like a dare. How could anyone in Gaza pull this off? This new system for getting out of Gaza kicked in just as Israel announced its plans for an offensive in Rafah. Just as Manal told Yousef she was ready to leave.

A new, much more rigid system that made it much, much harder to get out. Yousef couldn't talk about how he raised that much money, in dollars, and got it to the Hala office in Cairo, and how he did it fast enough to register to get on the list in order to maybe make it out in time. Most Palestinians in Gaza didn't want to talk about any of that either. So I reached a Palestinian outside of Gaza, on the West Bank. Okay, so first we set up the GoFundMe page,

Pretty quickly, talking to Bushra, I got a picture that this is the kind of person you need on your team if your family has any chance of getting out. Bushra is a lawyer. She speaks perfect English. She works for a global NGO, Oxfam. She's used to navigating bureaucracies in multiple languages.

She has connections in countries all over the world. To navigate this complex process, you need someone who can make things happen. You need a Bushra or a Yusuf. Apparently, you also need to know someone who's.

Like, so we had to then change the story, say that I kind of lived between Europe and Palestine and kind of travel for work. I do travel a lot. It had to be, we had to write the story in terms of, she was fundraising on behalf of me that lived in Europe, who was going to help my family in Gaza. The GoFundMe worked, but it.

So actually,

So you have to have, you.

It has to be, and I'm not first degree. I'm just like the in-law. I'm like the daughter-in-law. So I couldn't. And then my husband, Palestinian men under 40 years old, can't enter Egypt unless you have a specific,

you have to have, like a permit from the Egyptian authorities and secret services, and they do all the security checks. So that was also not an option for my, my, my husband to go. So it had to be his sister in Sweden.

Just to register them. Yeah. So we flew her out and her, her daughters and her husband to, because she was like two small, very small kids. So we flew them all out. And they're like, his situation is not amazing in Sweden.

They couldn't afford like $2,500 for the plane tickets. So we paid for those two.

God, now I'm talking about, when I'm like counting all of this, I'm just, I can't.

No way. Yeah. It, basically, we paid him $1,500 to take $15,000.

Yeah. It was risky. That was a risky move. And did you get the sense that that person is doing that?

So he was able to carry, I don't know. I don't know what he does, but he's like an entrepreneur. I have no details. That I didn't part. I didn't ask.

I was like, cool. We got somebody. My husband didn't really ask. He knew the guy. He knew the guy from a guy.

So like, he was like, okay, cool. He didn't ask.

And all of that. Then she collects that like driving around Cairo,

So it's not. That's a lot of cash. I mean, it's not a suitcase, I guess, but you can't put it in a wallet. No, you can't put it in a wallet. That's a good question.

I.

The one with the screenshots of this life or death list. The wait was excruciating. Bushra didn't want to think or talk about it. Her sister-in-law wanted to talk about it all the time. They were all watching the news and the list.

On April 14th their names appeared on the list. The family.

What did it? what changed? This was like. it's like okay, they're, they're gonna survive. you know they're gonna live.

Yeah, and there's no word for it in English, but maybe you can look it up. In Arabic. it's called Qahir. Mm-hmm. It's like.

it's like a mix of anger and disgust. It's the word. that's what it means like a mix of anger, disgust and despair.

And you felt that.

Never met her in-laws, because Israeli restrictions make it very hard to travel between the West Bank and Gaza.

Why do we have to go?

What do you why?

Because they're shamed. Because that's not who we are. you know? Like we've been rendered destitute. you know?

Like they're not destitute people. you know? Like they had a home and beautiful lives and and to put that on, your son.

I mean I don't know. I don't know if it's shame, but it's like guilt. maybe? It's like they're so grateful that they're shamed to say it. You know what I mean?

It's embarrassing that they put that on us. Mm-hmm. And so it's we don't talk about it. It's not like there's a thank you. Because even a thank you is like not enough for them, and so it's better not to say it.

Do you want to talk about it?

No. Because I would do it a million times over again, and they know that.

I just need to know that they're alive and they're good. and now, you know, I mean the thing is is that they're in Egypt now and I'm in Egypt now, and but the road ahead is so hard, and like coming here and like just seeing them like they're not the same people. They never will be the same people. you know? This brings us back to.

Yusuf's maneuvers were not the exact same as Boushra's, but they were just as involved and absurd. Right up until he was registered and waiting for permission to do something he did not want to do.

When he was growing up, Yusuf's uncle used to tell him he reminded him of his grandfather. He grew up hearing this a lot, the similarities to his grandfather. And Yusuf got it. His grandfather hustled, made things happen, he was resourceful. But Yusuf has been thinking about this lately.

What it meant to be like his grandfather. What else it meant.

His grandfather is the one who got everyone to Jabalia, to the refugee camp in the north of Gaza, when they were all pushed out of their homes in what is now Israel in 1948.. His grandfather is the one who made sure everyone got set up in the same place next to each other. Made sure they survived, had housing, had their needs met. He made sure they were safe and they were together. And they were.

Jabalia camp became a small city. People moved to bigger apartments nearby, had kids, but the family stayed safe and right next to each other. 75 years later, Yusuf was the one who moved to sisters and their families to a tent camp in Rafah, so they could all be nearby, safe and together. They were there for three months. when Yusuf heard from a contact in Egypt, a friend with connections at the Hala company, who told him that his family's names were likely to be listed in the next week.

He wasn't just failing at keeping the family together. He was the one who was going to split them up.

I don't have anything to pack.

That's the easiest part.

I have two jeans, pants, two t-shirts, one jacket, two jackets. And I actually most of it I will leave it for my brothers-in-law. I'm just going to take just what I could wear during the first day, just a pajama for the next day, and that's it. The easiest part is packing. What's the hardest part?

It's also packing. Tangibly. there is nothing to be packed during the journey, but we are packing our relations with our families. now. I don't know how it's going to be that day when we are just going out.

And I don't want to really think about that moment, because I don't know how it's going to be.

Yeah, it's going to be difficult. I don't want to think about it. Let's wait and see.

It's going to be listed for tomorrow. So I decided we were having iftar with my sisters. I told them that we are leaving the day after. I just wanted to use that day with them. We agreed to have iftar together, all of us.

We were planning for tomorrow that I don't want to go to work. I want to spend it with my sisters. I take my family there. We spend the entire day there. Then we go back to prepare ourselves to travel.

And suddenly, when we were there, the wife of one of our colleagues who lives with us, she called and she said, your names are listed. It was very shocking. It became suddenly. everything became chaos. Everyone started crying.

It was a very emotional moment that I didn't want to see.

My daughter, Elia, was crying because her aunts are crying. My wife is crying. My mother is crying.

And then I found myself in this chaotic situation, trying to understand if it's the right option or not.

And this is the second time I'm leaving things behind. I left my house in the north, toward the south. I left my house, my memories, everything in the north.

Now I can, I'm trying to understand or to imagine how my sisters are feeling when they are losing their backup, their supporter. Whenever they want anything, whenever they are facing anything, they know that Yusuf is there.

And I was like, it's fine. You, I, since a month, I informed you to be prepared for this moment. Then, here, where I lost control of my emotions.

Ah, it's usually I'm that tough man who is,

cannot be seen as a weak person. I understood how weak I am.

I don't want to be shown weak in front of them.

It's out of my head.

My sisters, I think they, I believe they know, they know that I will do anything for them. And whenever they need anything, I already prepared everything.

I, I'd never felt the pain inside me like today.

And I was right. I was right. And now it's, it's, it's real. It's happening. And I'm leaving, leaving Gaza tomorrow.

It's like losing my identity.

And now starting a new life as a refugee.

Thank you. I think our next call will be from a different place.

Yousef sat at the computer, continuing to try to make plans for his sisters, trying to figure out where were the Israeli tanks now? What might their approach into Rafah be? What was the intensity of the bombing that day, and what did it mean? Were the NGOs leaving Rafah yet? Were other people leaving?

Was it time for his sisters to move somewhere else in Gaza? Then, on May 6,, the Israeli military sent tanks into Rafah. The invasion had finally started. That same day, there was news that Hamas had agreed to a ceasefire. It was very confusing, but for a couple hours, it seemed like maybe there was going to be a ceasefire.

And...

And even with my sisters, I can just drop them in the car, and we keep running in Gaza from one place to the other. I don't mind it.

Hannah's story about Yousef was edited by Laura Starczewski and Nancy Updike. Our episode today was produced by Aviva de Kornfeld. The people who put together today's episode include Jendayi Bond, Zoe Chase, Michael Kamate, Emanuel Jochi, Catherine Raimondo, Nadia, Raymond, Safiya Riddle, Ryan Rummery, Frances Swanson, Christopher Sotala, Matt Tierney, Julie Whitaker, and Diane Wu. Our managing editor, Sara Abdirahman. Our senior editor is David Kestenbaum.

Our executive editor is Emanuel Berry. Reporting research in Arabic translation from Hani Hawassli. Arabic interpreting from Emes Raouf and Sassan Abdel Latif. Arabic voiceover, by Liam Lubanni. Additional reporting by Fatma and by Dana Balut.

Special thanks to all the reporters at Mada Massar and the Organized Crime, Corruption, and Reporting Project. Thanks also to Shana Lowe, Mona Chalabi, Miriam Marmer, Tara Abood, Adam Bakri, and Ronnie Mustafa. Casting out from Sabrina Hyman. Our website. If you're going on a long drive, going on a vacation, looking for something to listen to, over 800 episodes of our program streaming for absolutely free, thisamericanlife.org.

This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks, as always, to our program's co-founder, Mr. Torrey Malatia. You know, he keeps getting pulled into these spats on X, especially with this one guy. Torrey couldn't remember his name.

Elon.