00:00In many ways, nine-year-old Mahmoud is like any child his age.
00:07He enjoys playing with his father and beating his younger siblings at video games.
00:12During those moments, he is a happy boy.
00:16I am Palestinian.
00:17I am patient.
00:18I can take a lot.
00:23I can endure everything.
00:27But sometimes, as if out of nowhere, what he has gone through overcomes him.
00:33His mother tells the story, Mahmoud cannot.
00:37I saw Mahmoud lying face down.
00:42His head was moving and he was breathing, but his right arm was not there.
00:47And his left arm was completely crushed.
00:49He told me, Mom, you take my sister and go.
00:53I will be martyred.
00:54I told him no, my love.
00:56I would never leave you.
00:57He fell from my arms twice.
00:59I could not carry him at all.
01:04That was back in December.
01:05Mahmoud's mother tells me the family were heeding Israeli calls to leave the northern
01:10parts of the Gaza Strip.
01:11Then an Israeli rocket landed near Mahmoud.
01:16In the days after the strike, because of the anesthesia and fever, he was coming in and
01:20out of consciousness.
01:21He was hallucinating when he woke up and he would look at himself and ask me, where am
01:25I?
01:26Where are my hands?
01:27Why am I like this?
01:28And he would cry.
01:29I could not make him stop.
01:30So I would cry with him.
01:32After the injury, he became like a baby again.
01:34He needed help with everything.
01:40Slowly but surely, Mahmoud is recovering here in Qatar, along with more than 2,000 other
01:46evacuees from Gaza.
01:48Most of them are women and children.
01:50Many have serious injuries.
01:53Initially built to house football World Cup fans, this compound is now a microcosm of
01:58human suffering, caused by a war Israel says is justified to protect its people.
02:06Everyone here has a story of loss and tragedy.
02:10In November, Mahmoud, his wife, and two of their children were on their way to a market
02:15in Gaza when they were hit by an Israeli airstrike, he tells me.
02:20This video, he says, shows the aftermath of the attack.
02:23The boy being carried away is his youngest, Bahat.
02:27The woman lying in the background is his wife.
02:30Bahat lost his leg.
02:32His wife died in the hospital.
02:37She was everything.
02:45She was life.
02:51But thank God she left me the children.
02:53We were civilians walking down the street.
02:55All our lives, all we ever asked for from God was protection.
03:03His son is getting treatment.
03:05He misses his mother and his siblings, some of whom are still trapped in Gaza.
03:11Getting the family back together is all that Mahmoud can think about.
03:14But so far, all his attempts have failed.
03:21As for little Mahmoud, in one sense, he's the luckiest of the lucky.
03:25He was able to get out with his siblings and both of his parents.
03:29It's a big reason why, they say, he's having mostly good days.
03:34But the memories of his home, now a pile of rubble, are always with him.
03:41I'm used to being in my country, playing with my friends and playing with my cousins.
03:46What I loved the most was playing with my cousins.
03:49I loved them.
03:52We would ride bicycles together.
03:54We would play soccer together.
03:56We would go swimming.
03:57We were happy.
04:04We had fun.
04:08Mahmoud wants nothing more than to be able to return home one day.
04:12But the Gaza of his childhood no longer exists.
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