I want to remember Mariam.
I want to remember the beautiful smile that brightened her face. I want to remember the courageous journalist she was, the strong woman, the person who was a friend to everyone.
I want to remember her striving to capture all the moments – the moments of grief, of pain, sorrow, laughter and love in Gaza.
I want to remember her as the loving mother to her son, Ghaith. I want to remember her as the sister who brought happiness to her home, the daughter who was so close to her parents.
She’s the daughter who sacrificed and donated her kidney to her father to keep him alive.
I used to look at her in that very thin body, out there in the field, going to the front lines, capturing all those unfolding events fearlessly with just one kidney in her body.
I’ll always remember how she always, even at the worst times when she herself was too tired to take it, would choose to comfort you and tell you that it’s going to be OK. It’ll pass.
It’ll pass … I remember her words.
I will remember her in the face of Ghaith, her son, who looks so much like her. And I hope that one day, when he grows up and gets married, he names his daughter after Mariam, like she asked him to in her final letter to him.
Israel’s war forced me to leave Gaza at the end of 2023 with my family. I can’t imagine going back and not seeing Mariam, not waiting for her to come to sit beside me or looking over to check on her.
The world in a boy’s eyes
It didn’t take us much to become friends. We met often when we were out in the field.
If she were there first, I’d go stand next to her, and if I got there first, she’d come stand close. If we were covering something really bad or dangerous, we’d be checking on each other with our eyes, just to make sure the other was OK.
So many memories with Mariam in the field.
Between those moments of struggle, coverage, tear gas, bullets and explosions, we had moments in which we could just sit for a couple of minutes and speak about our kids.
Ghaith was her world. And it broke her heart when she had to send him off to his dad in the United Arab Emirates after the war started to keep him safe.
I told her that was the right thing to do, that she wouldn’t be able to work when she was so worried about him all the time. As a mother, I went through the same, but at least my kids had their dad with them at home.
“You’re doing this for him. You’re doing it to protect him,” I told her. Because this is what we want most, as mothers.
All she wanted was to know that he was safe, that he wasn’t hungry, that he wasn’t thirsty.
After she sent him, she missed him so much but was relieved to know that he was safe, he was not hearing bombs.
She told me that when he called her and cried because he missed her, she would tell him the war would be over soon and she would come to him – that he should focus on that, think about the day they would meet again.
She clung to that last bit of hope because of Ghaith. She longed to hold him, to see him.
When I saw the news about Mariam, I was in such disbelief that I kept calling my colleagues in Gaza and asking one question: Is Mariam alive?
When they said no, I just hung up and called someone else to ask the same question.
My husband was telling me she’s gone, but I was insisting that she was fine, that they made a mistake in including her photo with the other murdered journalists.
And until now, I just feel that she’s going to text me, she’s going to respond to one of my stories.
I can’t imagine going back to Gaza and not seeing Mariam in the field and not seeing all these friends and colleagues that have gone.
Her last testament to her son
I think Mariam felt she was leaving very soon.
Everyone spoke about the night before she was killed when she was at the morgue.
She spoke to a morgue attendant, telling him that when she dies, could he please not put her in a plastic body bag, that she just wanted to be in a shroud.
And she even wrote that goodbye note for Ghaith.
She wrote in Arabic, and I wanted to translate it for Mariam because I know her and how difficult it is to write such a note.
I wanted to translate it as a mother, as her friend, for her child.
“Gaith the heart and soul of your mother, I want you to pray for me, don’t cry over my death,” she wrote.
When I was in Gaza, I wrote a similar note so that if I’m killed, they would find it on my phone. This is what mothers in Gaza are driven to do.
Anybody can write their will, but these aren’t wills. This is our insecurity, our feeling of being unsafe, targeted and hunted.
That feeling, living with it every day and every night, tears your soul.
If you look at Mariam in that last video she posted in the elevator two hours before the strike, she had lost a lot of weight and her face showed the pain, grief, the loneliness she felt.
Being away from Ghaith probably added to her pain, even though she always knew that if he fulfilled her dreams for him, he would travel around the world, study abroad, become a businessman, not stay in Gaza his whole life like she had.
She also wanted him to come back home at the end of it, to come back to be near her and have his family there.
I would tell her that Ghaith would never leave her, that she was his world too. And he was so proud of his mother. He saw how strong and capable she was, raising him alone, rushing to the front lines to do her job with all her heart.
She didn’t live to see him grow up, but she made sure he was safe and left him to carry on.
She leaves behind the pictures and videos she took, the meaning they carried. She wanted her images to speak, to deliver a message. She loved speaking to people and sharing their pain, their messages and their voices.
So many times, when I looked at those pictures and videos, I would want to talk to her but didn’t know what to say to ease her pain. I was so far away.
And that was why I would send very few words when I was able to check on her, to let her know that I’m here for her, that I’m still praying for her every day, that I’m still waiting for the day this ends and I come back.