Khalid El-Astal is sitting in the lounge of the Raddison Blu hotel close to Dublin Airport, bleary-eyed, surrounded by people he has never met before. Almost 48 hours have passed since his wife, Ashwak Jendia, died in a Khan Younis hospital in Gaza.
“I’m thinking about my wife,” Mr El-Astal (30), an Irish citizen, says on Friday evening, his voice wavering. He landed in Dublin from Istanbul hours earlier, returning to his country of birth for the first time in over two decades. “I can’t stop thinking about her.”
More than 60 per cent of Ms Jendia’s body was severely burned following a strike on Khan Younis late last month. She was admitted to Nassar Hospital, where for some days her condition was stable.
Mr El-Astal had last seen his wife and two young children – Sara (1) and Ali (4) – months earlier, before he left Gaza to work in Riyadh, in Saudi Arabia. As war broke out between Israel and Hamas last month, restrictions around the enclave tightened, leaving Mr El-Astal with no way of reaching his young family.
On Wednesday, Ms Jendia’s eldest brother called Mr El-Astal. He had to speak with Ashwak, he told him – she was deteriorating.
“She was screaming in pain,” Mr El-Astal says. “That was the only thing I heard, for five minutes.
“I was calling her name. She said, ‘I don’t want to talk’ ... She was screaming from pain.”
She was dead soon after the phone call.
Mr El-Astal suspects that difficulties in maintaining sanitation levels in the hospital contributed to his wife’s extensive wounds becoming infected.
“My dream was to take her outside, to Ireland, together,” Mr El-Astal says. He spent much of his childhood in Belfast, where his father worked at a university lecturer.
As Israel intensified its bombing campaign on Gaza, Mr El-Astal worked frantically to try to reunite his family, eventually deciding that coming to Ireland was his best hope.
“I was planning to come here, and book a flight to come here, to figure out how we can take her to hospital here in Ireland. But she died before [that],” he says.
Mr El-Astal has continued to send WhatsApp messages to his wife’s number in the days since her death, he says.
“I love her. I used to memorise everything that happened to me all day and tell her about it.
“I was travelling and seeing these beautiful views [today] ... that hurt me. It killed me.”
Mr El-Astal has lost others in the violence. His Belfast-born brother, Majed (28). His mother, Hanaa. Others, extended family members. “I can name 50 of my closest cousins who are dead,” he says.
“I was dreaming and hoping for a lot of things. I am a highly-educated man. I have lived a lot of experiences in many fields. I love to read, I love to hope, I love to dream. That’s nothing. That’s nothing when your mother is killed.”
Burdened with debilitating trauma, Mr El-Astal cycles through differing emotions. “I’m not sure what is inside me, pain or anger or sadness.”
But he is sure of the future he wants for his young children, Ali and Sara. It is the same future that his wife wanted for them – one of safety and opportunity in Ireland.
“That was her will, before she died. She told that during the war, like 20 times. But I want to be sure that they will be secured, that they’ll be in a good place, and I will be able to take care of them.”
Mr El-Astal is being assisted by The Irish Muslim Peace and Integration Council on his arrival in Ireland, and Fred Rooney, an American lawyer who worked with Ms Jendia, an engineer, in Gaza.
“It feels like coming full circle,” Mr Rooney says, sitting in the hotel lounges, across from Mr El-Astal.
After weeks of phone conversations, they met for the first time on Friday. Every so often, Mr El-Astal reaches over and touches Mr Rooney’s leg, a small gesture of gratitude.
“Out of my immense gratitude and respect for [Ms Jendia], it was clear that whatever I could do for Khalid, would be to help further whatever her goals were, to be able to come to Ireland and live with the kids.”
Mr El-Astal’s children do not, at present, hold Irish passports.
“I have only [my children] ... I don’t know, we say it in Arabic: ‘They are my wife’s smell’. The only thing from my wife.”
