834: Yousef and the Fourth Move
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Since the beginning of the war in Gaza, Yousef Hamas has been a master of good timing and good luck. We did a story about him a few months ago, and we remind you for a minute who he is and how capably he got his family from place to place. Hamas attacked Israel on October 7th. Yousef fled his home on October 8th because he was afraid that Jabaliya, where he was from, was going to be bombed. And the next day, October 9th, Jabaliya was bombed. As the war moved, he moved a second time down south to a city called Khan Yunis,

Then Israel dropped leaflets from the sky telling everybody to evacuate Khan Yunus immediately, get to 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, Khana Jafi-Walt. He told Khana that he knew his sisters, who were in Khan Yunus, needed also to go to Rafah, and he kept wheedling, 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 away 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. The first thing I said today when I met them, there is no discussion, we are leaving. So you didn't like hug them and cry and say, I'm so glad you survived, you said. No, I was, I was, no, no. We have a different type of relation. I don't, it's not about hugging them. I was laughing. You should have died. I should be in the morgue now. I was laughing.

Finally, he took his sisters to safety in Rafah, in a tent camp that he built for them. This was back in December. Every time Yusuf's tent camp of extended family in Rafah grew to 60 people,

with Yusuf managing it as mayor, repairman, caterer, driver, healthcare provider. And then, on the same day Yusuf's sister, Asil, had a baby, bringing the population of the tent camp to 61, the prime minister of Israel announced he was planning to evacuate Rafah and invade the city where Yusuf's family and over a million other Palestinians were living. 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 Rana back then. Actually, to be honest, I don't want to think about that because I know there's no solution.

And unfortunately, this time I'm completely useless because I ran out of options. So what I'm going to do? I have never heard you talk like that, Youssef. I've never heard you say that. You're always the guy that's like, yeah, I'll figure it out. I'll call so-and-so tomorrow. No, we don't have it right now, but I'll figure it out. I don't have options ahead of me. When I have options, I'll start to think deeply about it. But up to now, I'm completely useless. But what's one other option?

It was just one that Youssef had never seriously considered. They could try to leave Gaza, which might seem like an obvious choice that anybody would want to do. Flee the place where bombs are falling and it's getting harder and harder to find food and drinkable water. But it's not an obvious choice for Youssef and for lots of people as you're here. Today, what happens when Youssef 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 WBEZ Chicago, this is American Life. I'm Ira Glass. And with that...

I'll turn things over to Hanna. Yusuf did not want to leave Gaza, where he's from, a place where he knows everyone, knows every system, has connections everywhere. His job is doing humanitarian work in Gaza for Gazans, and his entire family is in Gaza. A core part of Yusuf's identity is that he takes care of the family. 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 parents. We were visiting her parents. I had my daughter, Ilya, five years old, Ilya, telling me that we are going to travel to Egypt.

That meant to you, they're talking about it during the day and she's overhearing it? Yes. So I understood that when my daughter came to ask me, it means that they reached the limits and, halas, they want to do it. Yousef did not realize that a conversation had started among the women in his family. There wasn't so much happening behind his back as just away from him in the places he wasn't. 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? 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, Asil.

Asil is the sister who is most like Youssef. Decisive, a problem solver, a planner. I went to Asil. She was the first to encourage me. She said, let the children live a good life. Go, leave. She encouraged me. Honestly, Asil 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 a seal, gave her 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. Yousef's mom, after some persuading, agreed to go with Manal and Yousef 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? Okay.

First of all, it's very, very expensive. Very expensive. It's a very long process. Unclear process, actually. There is a lot of playing here and there. 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 scabbing my responsibility towards my sisters, my responsibility towards my job, my responsibility towards my friends who I'm supporting. But I'm standing ahead my responsibility towards my children. It's very, very, I don't know, it's a very difficult decision if you put these two responsibilities in front of you and you have to choose. This was March.

Israel continued to say, "Our plan is to invade Rafah." Youssef knew if they did invade, they might close the border. There was limited time to act. 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 Youssef act through the entire war. Not that he was stalling. He'd made some calls. He was going through the steps.

But old Youssef 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 Youssef 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 thinking about it deeply.

And I'm very sorry, and I know it's the wrong way, but for me, the only thing that I can do is to keep avoiding thinking about it until it became more closer. I will do it. I'm starting the process and all of that. It's a very long process, very complicated process. Yousef couldn't talk about the process, how they'd get out on the record.

He worried, justifiably, that any public statement could jeopardize their chances of getting out. What he could say was that he had paid to register his family to leave and that at some point his family's names would appear on a list of people allowed to cross the Rafah border. But when that would happen? 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. One of the incidents happened, we had an issue between my sister and one of my sisters and her husband. And when I went there, I had to solve the issue there and...

I found out that my sisters were complaining, "He's leaving us here in these circumstances." They were a bit annoyed. So I was like, "Okay, now you were pushing for that and now you are objecting to that." Then I found out at some moment that they were angry and all of that. It's fine. I know how they feel about it and I know how they are scared. I believe they have the right to be scared.

He was not doing his job, keeping them safe and together. But while he waited, Yousef really did try on the safety front. He threw himself in to 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. Yeah, there is a lot of things had to be put in place and to be designated for someone because I found out that I was doing a lot of things.

You have definitely been doing a lot of things. I would think you would need at least a dozen people to do all the jobs you've been doing. I believe a hundred people would never do the job with love and passion as I was doing it. It was always part of, give me energy always when I am managing things for them. That's the difference between me doing the job and a hundred people doing the job.

President Biden was warning Israel not to invade Rafah. Twenty-six EU countries issued a statement saying an invasion of Rafah would be catastrophic. Youssef continued to wait. There continued to be bombings, drones, gunfire all the time. But also something new that Youssef noticed happening around him in Rafah and at the family's tent camp. A slow-motion collapse.

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. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.

So my brother-in-law had a fight with a neighborhood, one of the neighbors. And my two brothers-in-law beating that guy and insult him in a bad way. And it happens that he's a friend of mine. And that was difficult. I had to intervene between both of them, apologizing here and there, trying to find, to be mediated between them. What did they fight about?

Small children had a fight, they went to speak with him, they didn't like the way he responded. It resulted in clashes by hands. Today I have another one with one of the other brother, Loh Ahmed, with another neighbor for another stupid reason. The circumstances and what we are going through is pushing us to become unstable mentally.

Everyone's under huge pressure from the amount of responsibilities that he has 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. The more of this Yusuf saw, the more he settled in to the decision to go. Now it's really common. We see people with guns, with guns.

A lot of disputes between families, a lot of killing crimes, looting, and that's affecting the entire society itself. People are fighting for no reasons. 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. Small dispute have resulted seven people killed. It's simple as that. What happened? I wasn't there, but I was hearing the shooting. It's next to us directly. It's like 100 meters away and, you know, a lot of ambulances and

What turned that fight is just a small line in front of drinking water. So that's one of the things that's pushing me to, you know, I have to rescue my children from that. But Yusuf, you've seen Israeli bombs destroy homes. You've seen much more dramatic than that. Why did that get to you?

That's a good question. It feels different when you look to it as your own people. I don't justify for the Israelis what they are doing and what they are committing in Gaza. But with all the aggression that they are doing, it's a bit different the way you see it when you see it among your own people.

But societies can easily be fragile and destroyed like our society is destroyed now. Seven weeks after Israel announced plans to invade Rafah, Youssef and Manal were still waiting. Every night, they would check a telegram channel called the Landport-Rafah Crossing.

Around 10:00 p.m., it would post screenshots of a printed list of names. You'd have to zoom in on the photo, 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. Youssef and Manal's names were never listed. But Youssef 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? It's happening and so I feel excited for that. You feel excited? Yeah, kind of afraid and excited at the same time. So I'm going for nowhere. It's like I'm abandoning a lot of things here in Gaza. My social status, my value, my job, my career, everything.

Yeah, so to a new journey. And unfortunately, until now, I don't have any horizon where I'm going. What's the plan? I'm surprised to hear you say you're excited. And excited in a weird way. Okay, it's like I want it to happen. And it's like when you are going to get a needle or something.

But there is a pain that you go through it, and I just want to do it. Like when you're getting a shot and you just want it to be over. Yeah, exactly. So that's not really excited. That's like dread. I don't know. English is not my language. It sounds more like dread to me than excitement. Nervous, nervous maybe. Yeah.

It's kind of, yeah, I just want to do it. Before I did the registration, I was like, okay with it. I didn't think about it a lot. But since I registered, it became like a pain that is like, I just want to finish it. You just want to be on the other side already of whatever is going to happen. Exactly. What is this? This wait to be placed on a list? What is this? And you have to pay to get on the list? Why? Why?

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 Youssef was waiting on and could barely talk about. Hanna Jaffe-Wald. Coming up, the actual price to get somebody out of Gaza. And yes, they're going to want that in cash. No wire transfer, no credit card, no mobile payment. Good old-fashioned cash only.

That's in a minute. I'm Chicago Public Radio. When our program continues. This is American Life from Ira Glass. Today's show, we're returning to Yusef Hamash and his family in Marafa, who've been caught up in this war that began October 7th, when Hamas crossed into Israel, killed nearly 1,200 Israelis, and 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 Yusef and his sisters trapped in the middle of the fighting.

And back in February, when Yusuf decided to try to leave Gaza, leave others 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. Yusuf was cautious when it came to talking about this part of the process. So Hannah started asking around, how exactly does it work? How did a person get out of Gaza with the 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 not a clean, defensible operation when nobody who touches it will talk about it. I spoke with Palestinians who went through the Rafah crossing or were trying to, people who've reported on the system, people who work inside it. Almost everybody didn't want to talk publicly. They all worried about pissing off the wrong people in the Egyptian military and intelligence.

The first detailed document I read about how the Rafah Crossing works was an investigation by a group of reporters at a site called the Organized Crime Corruption and Reporting Project. And even they, the people who authored the report, did not want to be named. You can just say that I'm one of the OCCRP reporters who worked on this investigation.

There were several reporters working inside and outside Gaza. I'm going to call this one Naya. Naya explained, After October 7th, when Hamas attacked Israel, officially Palestinians in Gaza with no other passport were not allowed to leave through the Rafah border. Israel closed every other exit point.

But pretty soon, these ads started popping up online offering to get people out. 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 and luxury, your dignity and pride intact. And really, I mean, it's like they're so creepy and tacky at the same time. I mean, wait, let me see if I can find it. 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.

Why is that so funny to you? Because, I mean, the country is, I mean, Gaza is a place of death and destruction. And the Sphinx is next to him and the plane flies over the Sphinx. Like he's going to see the pyramids with his camera around his neck. It has nothing to do with the reality. Every war has its own manic economy.

These travel coordinators were sometimes charging $2,500 per person, sometimes $5,000. Depended who you asked and when. You could send the money from your phone or hand it to a coordinator in Gaza. As Beth Naya and the other OCCRP reporters could find out, a lot of the money seemed to go to Egyptian intelligence, although Egypt has publicly denied this.

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 reigned 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 Youssef she was ready to leave. A new, much more rigid system that made it much, much harder to get out. Youssef 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. OK, so so first we set up the GoFundMe page and that was a whole a whole thing, an ordeal of itself. I knew the system was outrageous, but I didn't know no until I talked to Bushra.

Bushra Khalidi lives in the West Bank in Ramallah. She's Palestinian. Her husband's family is from Gaza. And Bushra wanted to help them get out. Seven people, $30,000, which she didn't have and had to fundraise. So I couldn't say in my GoFundMe page that I lived in Palestine because Palestinians are not allowed to receive any funds from GoFundMe.

So and they actually emailed me and said, you know, because you're in a risky area, blah, blah, blah. Like you cannot, you know. And then I had a co-sponsor with me from the U.S. Like eventually I found somebody. I found a it's it's a long story. Short version, she needed someone else to help her set up the GoFundMe page. And the way she found that person, her brother-in-law is in a band that tours and knew someone in the U.S. who could help them set up the 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 in a band. So that was the first hurdle. And then it was a hurdle to write the story because every time you wrote the story, it has to be verified by GoFundMe and then they would allow it or not. So they weren't allowing it, me mentioning that I lived in Palestine, so we had to change the story. But we didn't want to lie, you know what I mean? So we had to then change the story, say that I kind of lived between Europe and Palestine.

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 wasn't enough. They raised $20,000. They needed $30,000 for the Hala fees.

Bushra and her husband were already sending money constantly into Gaza. Money to pay for $200 bags of flour. For transportation, every time the family had to move. Five times. Bushra knew if the family made it to Cairo, they wouldn't be allowed to work, so they'd need help paying for housing and food there, too. So actually, Bushra realized, they needed $50,000. So we took a loan out of $20,000 and then put our savings, $20,000. Okay. Okay.

Yeah. All of my, all our life savings. How did you guys make that decision? Or was that an obvious choice? That also was what delayed the process is like, we're currently in like, we bought a house a year ago. We're like finishing it. So I mean, it's just been, it's been a huge financial strain.

I talked to people in Gaza who sold the cars they were living in to pay for these fees. I heard about families that sold their furniture, took out loans, families who hit up aunts and cousins and extended family across multiple countries until every family member's savings was drained. And once you did that, had the money in hand...

It wasn't over. The move for us that was really complicated was finding, was figuring out a way how to get the money in. Because you have to pay cash in dollars in Egypt. And in order for you to, you can't send the money by bank transfer to an Egyptian account. It has to be like,

somebody in Egypt that has a USD account. Wait, wait, wait. What? So you have to have, you have to have, you can't transfer money to an account? No. It's like $40,000 to Egypt. And you couldn't figure out literally just how to get the cash there. How do we get the 40,000, 40K in? Well, the thing is, is that I, I could have flown out and taken it, but then we found out that it has to be a first degree relative that registers a

Do you see what I mean? They have to regiment the family. It has to be. And I'm not a first degree. I'm just like the in-law. I'm like this, you know, 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 husband to go. Oh my God. So it had to be his sister in Sweden. Just to register them. Yeah. So we flew her out and 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...

Once the sister arrived in Cairo, Bouchard then had to figure out how do I get her the cash so she can go in person to register the family at the Hala office.

Boucher had a friend in Egypt. He could receive about $20,000 in his account. So I was like, okay, I'll transfer $20,000 to him. And then we sent and there was a person, I'm not exactly sure. And again, I'm not asking questions, but he was like,

I don't want to say an agent, but he was like a person that was going to Egypt, a businessman going to Egypt that was taking money for people, dollars to Egypt for people. So he carried $15,000 for us. No way. Yeah. Basically, we paid him $1,500 to take $15,000 with him. And just to be like the mule, just to carry it, basically. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was risky. That was a risky move. And did you get the sense that that person is doing that like all the time?

Yeah, but I don't think it was for necessarily evacuating people from Gaza. It's just he's a businessman. He has like businesses in Cairo. 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 to... My husband didn't really ask. He knew the guy. He knew the guy from a guy. So he was like, okay, cool. He didn't ask questions. Okay. So your sister-in-law arrives in Cairo. She goes to meet your friend who's holding $20,000 for you and the businessman who has personally delivered for quite a high fee another $15,000. Yeah. And all of that. Then she collects that like driving around Cairo, those like piles of cash. Yeah.

Literally. Well, yeah, I guess. I mean, is it piles of cash? It's like $350, $100 notes. So it's not. That's a lot of cash. I mean, it's not a suitcase, I guess. But it's not. You can't put it in a wallet. No, you can't put it in a wallet. That's a good question. I should ask how she carried it. But they know. So they got an apartment right next to the company. The Hala Company. Yeah.

The sister-in-law stood in line, paid the money, and then they waited for the names of Bushra's in-laws to show up on the list. Bushra and her family were stuck checking the same strange telegram channel Youssef was, 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 left the next day. I mean, definitely when their names came out on the list, it was like a physical, there was something physical that changed in me. What did it feel like? What changed? This was like, it's like, okay, they're going to survive. You know, they're going to live. Yeah. And there's no word for it in English, but maybe you can look it up.

In Arabic, it's called qahir. It's like a mix of anger and disgust. The word, that's what it means. It's like a mix of anger, disgust, and despair. And you felt that toward what made you feel? Like which part? How? I mean, listen, I had never met my in-laws.

Never met her in-laws because Israeli restrictions make it very hard to travel between the West Bank and Gaza. Like, how is it that this has to happen for us to meet and for my son to meet his grandparents for the first time, you know? Like, how? Why? Why do we have to go through this? What is it going to mean to your family to have spent this money on this, like, long term or... Shame. Yeah.

Shame. Shame? Why? Because they're ashamed. 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 beautiful home and beautiful lives. 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? Yeah.

It's like they're so grateful that they're ashamed to say it. You know what I mean? It's embarrassing that they put that on us. And so we don't talk about it. It's not like there's a thank you. Because even a thank you is 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 that 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. 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. Yusuf, who knew this. He knew leaving Gaza meant he would not be the same person.

And still, Youssef was going through all these steps, through a system designed to frustrate, deter, and bankrupt him.

Youssef's version of this process, raising an astounding amount of money, getting the cash in dollars physically to the Hala office, Youssef's maneuvers were not the exact same as Bushra'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, Youssef'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's 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. Jebelia camp became a small city. People moved to bigger apartments nearby, had kids. But the family stayed safe and right next to each other.

Seventy-five years later, Yusuf was the one who moved his 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.

Yusuf, are you packing? I don't have anything to pack. That's the easiest thing. That's the easiest part. I have two jeans, pants, two t-shirts, two jackets. And actually most of it, I will leave it for my brother's alone. 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. Hi, Yousef. Hello, Hannah. Hi. Hi, how's your day been? I don't know. It was a bit long. To end up with our name listed by the Egyptians to cross tomorrow to leave to Egypt.

And I wasn't expecting that soon. But looking to my sisters today, I received the news when I was with my sisters. It was really difficult how to deal with it. You were with your sisters when you found out? They list the names usually after 10 p.m. at night. So we were there having Iftar with Asil and the rest of my sisters, Hiba and Hadil.

I have a friend who lives in Egypt and he has some access with the company which is the company that we just went through to cross to Egypt. He told me that my name is not going to be listed today so I don't need to wait for the list. 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 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. Suddenly, when we were there...

one of the wife of one of our colleagues who lives with us she called and she said your names are listed and it was very shocking and it became suddenly everything became a chaos everyone started crying and it was 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

And then I found myself in this chaotic situation, trying to understand if it's the right option or not. You were having doubts? Yeah, of course. I'm going for nowhere, leaving behind me everything, an entire life.

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, living 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.

What did they say, Yousef? What did they say to you? Everyone was in a shock, including me. Everyone was crying. And when I was looking to my sisters, I felt how weak I am to make that decision. I don't have enough courage to leave everything behind. And this is one of the hardest moments in my life. Yeah. Yeah.

When I was looking for my sisters, when they are thinking about losing their entire family, it's not only me, it's my wife, my children, their mother. I couldn't find the right word. What should I say? And the issue is that I was very overwhelmed emotionally and emotionally.

If I said, and it happened, when I started to talk to them, I was trying to show how strong I am, and I was like, it's fine. Since a month, I informed you to be prepared for this moment. And here where I lost control of my emotions. Usually, I'm that tough man who cannot be seen as...

a weak person and I understood how weak I am and I don't want to be shown weak in front of them but it's out of my hand 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 and

Yousef, you told me over the last months that every time I asked how you feel about leaving, you were sort of like, I can't, I don't know. I'll know when it happens. I don't know. I can't think about it. Do you feel like you're suddenly thinking about it now? I was postponing thinking about it because I understood how hard it is. And I was doing right. I was doing right today when I received the news and I'm knowing that

I'm leaving tomorrow. I never felt the pain inside me like today. I was right. I was right. And now it's real. It's happening. I'm leaving Gaza tomorrow. It's like losing my identity. When are you leaving? I'm leaving 7 a.m. in the morning. Oh, wow. You're leaving in six hours. Yeah, I'm leaving. Are you going to sleep? I don't know if I could manage to sleep.

Because tomorrow morning at 7 a.m., I have to go to meet my sisters again before we leave. I want to make sure even if I have one more minute to spend it with them, I'll do it. I don't know. I'm going through one of the most difficult. It's not one of the most. It's the most difficult decision I made in my entire life. I know. Now I'm just leaving everything. Now I am leaving.

And I will be a refugee once again. Born as a refugee, raised as a refugee, and now starting a new life as a refugee. Yousef, I want to let you go have time with your family and also hopefully sleep some before you have to make that trip tomorrow. Thanks. Thank you, Khana. Thank you so much. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. And I think our next call will be from a different place. Yeah. Yeah.

Hopefully it will go okay. All right. Bye, Youssef. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye. Youssef left through the Rafah Crossing the next day. That day, his family saw the world outside Gaza for the first time. The kids were amazed by the electricity in Cairo and the trees. Trees in Gaza have been cut down now to use for fire.

When Ilya and Ahmed started to tell their cousins in Gaza about the watermelon they were eating and the playground they played on, Yusuf had to tell them to keep that kind of thing to themselves from now on. Manal took the children to the market and bought chocolate.

Youssef 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. I was very, very excited and, like, hyped. And it's like, what to do? It's like, OK, now I start to think about what next, what I'm going to do with the families. Like, I should go back to Gaza. Now I need, I start even to look at the process to go back to Gaza as soon as I can. What? Really? Might take one, two weeks, yeah.

I'm usually here. What am I doing here? Watching the news? Writing reports? I want to be there. The only option for me is to go back to Gaza. 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.

Yousef was suddenly back to the person I remembered talking to for every other move before this last one. Energized, frantic. But that day, there was no ceasefire.

And the next day, the Israeli military seized the Rafah crossing into Egypt and closed the border. There was no way back. Yusuf would be in one world. His sisters would be back home in another. Hana Jafi-Walt is one of the producers of our show.

Our managing editor, Sara Abdurrahman. Our senior editor is David Kestenbaum. Our executive editor is Emmanuel Berry.

Thanks also to Shana Lowe, Mona Chalabi, Miriam Marmer, Tara Aboud, Adam Bakri, and Rania 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. Troy Malatia. You know, he keeps getting pulled into these spats on X.

Especially with this one guy. Tori couldn't remember his name. Elon something. I don't know what he does, but he's like an entrepreneur. I'm Eric Glass. Back next week with more stories of this American life.