The paintings of nine-year-old Saddan El-Safade speak for themselves: a black background riddled with light spots like explosions in the night, the sea and vivid flashes of gouache on a strip of land, a Palestinian flag with a bloody red triangle and a white stripe that has disappeared. "These are my memories of Gaza," she said.

Saddan, her mother Israa, her little brother Ahmad, and her sister Watin now live in the grounds of a housing estate in the middle of the desert some 30 kilometers east of Cairo. The small family arrived in the Egyptian capital in February, after several months of survival in the Palestinian enclave, which was devastated by Israeli attacks.

It was a miracle that Saddan survived. On November 4, 2023, their house in the Shujaiya district was blown up by a bomb. The little girl, who had been playing cards in the living room, was buried under the walls. "Stone by stone, we pulled her out of the rubble," said her mother, Israa El-Safade, whose scarf had caught fire on contact with the glowing ashes.

Survival, a 'constant challenge'

The child's skull had been cracked open, and one of her legs was dangling at a right angle. Her entire body was broken. At Al-Shifa hospital, she was quickly stitched up before being transferred a few streets away to the Amis du Patient medical center, where a young intern took charge of her. "Do we cut or not?" The question still haunts Israa. The mother immediately refused to have her daughter's leg amputated. She managed to get her 25 kilometers away, to Deir al-Balah, to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, where the little girl was eventually saved and her leg preserved − at a cost of several operations carried out without painkillers.

Months later, sitting in a café in Cairo, nine-year-old Saddan was talking effortlessly about these traumatic episodes. In front of her distraught mother, Saddan spoke in a clear voice, as if she were recounting an ordinary day at school, while devouring a chocolate ice cream. In the hospitals of Gaza, she decided that she would become a world-renowned surgeon, and that she would work in Gaza, "to heal the children. Because every country needs to know that Gaza exists," she said.

"Today, my only concern is to get my children into school," said Israa, who is raising the three children alone. "But without an Egyptian residence permit, it's impossible to enroll them in a school." Several days a week, Israa takes Saddan to a private language institute, "so that she doesn't forget French and English. But it's expensive!"

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