Yousef… When a Dream Is Killed While Carrying a Bag of Flour
The story of a young man killed while trying to feed his family.
Foreword
This piece is part of Abood Abed Alrhman’s ongoing work from inside Gaza, where he writes the truth of what he sees and loses. It is not commentary from a distance. It is a young writer documenting the violence that keeps taking the people around him.
In this story, he writes about his childhood friend Yousef, a boy he grew up with, played with, and survived siege after siege beside. We share these stories because we hope they help humanize Palestinians, who are too often reduced to headlines or statistics. These are real people with real lives, real pain, and real suffering, and their stories deserve to be seen as such.
If you want to support young Abood, donate to help him and his family survive this genocide:
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Yousef was not just a passing friend in the neighborhood…
He was a piece of our shared childhood, a voice from yesterday’s laughter, a face that looked like us in every way… in dreams, in exhaustion, and in that constant attempt to appear stronger than we really were.
He lived next to our house, exactly my age… we grew up together, running after a small ball as if it contained the whole world. Yousef played football with rare passion, as if his feet knew the path to his dream better than he did. He wasn’t just a good player… he carried big ambitions, a living heart, and a spirit that refused to surrender.
He was an ordinary young man…
Or at least, that’s how it should have been.
But in Gaza, nothing remains ordinary.
Yousef, like me, had a family…
A family that waited, hoped, and went hungry.
He lived everything we lived: bombing, fear, a brief ceasefire that felt like an illusion, and then a harsher return of siege and hunger. In the final famine, when hunger became more brutal than fear, Yousef could no longer bear to watch his family suffer in silence.
He did not go in search of heroism…
He went in search of a bag of flour.
He knew—yes, he knew well—that the road to aid was not a road to survival, but a path from which one might never return.
He knew he might come back carried on shoulders…
Or not return at all.
And yet, he went.
He went carrying the weight of his family’s pain, and the unbearable burden of helplessness.
At the Zikim area, Yousef was not alone…
There were dozens of young men, all just like him, all walking toward death with only one purpose: to feed those they loved.
They approached the trucks as if they carried life itself…
But in Gaza, life often arrives wrapped in death.
The gunfire began.
Some fell, and Yousef survived… for a moment.
Then came the strike no soul escapes:
A shell… tearing the place apart, swallowing dreams in an instant.
Most of those there were killed.
As for Yousef…
He was struck by shrapnel in his neck and abdomen.
He fell—not carrying a bag of flour, but carrying his final wounds.
His younger brother was beside him…
Calling out with a voice trembling between hope and collapse:
“Don’t leave me… don’t die… stay awake… I’m here… I’ll get you to the hospital…”
But what can a child’s voice do against bleeding death?
His brother cried… not only from grief,
but from that helplessness that slowly kills a person from within.
They carried Yousef to the hospital…
But he had already gone ahead of them.
He was martyred before he arrived.
The news struck his family like lightning…
They had not just lost a son,
but the pillar of their home, the one who carried the weight of their days.
They loved him…
As if love, in this land, has become another path to loss.
This is life in Gaza…
Where young men do not grow old,
because their lives are taken before they can unfold.
Yousef did not grow older…
But he left greater than a dream, heavier than a story.
He left…
while simply trying to feed his family.💔💔😞😞
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These stories take a piece of my soul 💔
I’d trade one Palestinian for nearly ever single elected official. Even one of our most honest, transparent, and truest-people-fighters, Rashida Talib is….Palestinian! And the ppl in her district, like me, have consistently voted for her bc she’s consistently been on the PEOPLE’s side.
Last month I protested in the Mexicantown district of Detroit. Other than the obvious as to why we have daily protests and lookouts there; 6 High Schoolers have been abducted by ICE. Fucking HIGH SCHOOL KIDS. None of this is getting media attention.
This protest was much larger than the daily ones of a few hundred ppl. It was over 1000 of us. And out of those thousand only a few independent journalists showed up, and guess who? RASHIDA TALIB.
She’s constantly at protests. Talking to ppl, telling them how she’s fighting for them in Congress despite having little power, and how she won’t ever have “free time” until Detroiter’s feel safe from ICE & Law enforcement.
Palestinians, like most BIPOC ppl who haven’t sold out, are our strongest advocates for change, justice, and equity. They have loads and loads of empathy bc they live under a constant state of oppression, racism, and inequity.
This doesn’t mean all BIPOC ppl are fighters who use their empathy to help others while also helping themselves. Throughout history there’s been plenty of BIPOC ppl who’ve decided to grift with fascists. They think that the ppl can’t win, so if you can’t beat your enemy, join them.
But we know who they are. We see their lies, greed, and corruption.
Despite what Jewish ppl think, the most anti-Semitic behavior is exhibited against Muslims and Arabic ppl. They don’t “own” the label of Semite. Anyone who speaks a Semite language is a Semite. That includes a lot of Arabic ppl.
In many states now, we can’t even publicly speak out against Isreal. They’ve made it a crime to call out fascists, genocide, apartheid, and ethic cleansing SPECIFICALLY as it pertains to Isreal.
We have to keep sharing and reading stories about the atrocities committed by Isreal in Gaza and each Palestinian who’s been tortured, starved, maimed, had their homes and businesses stolen, and killed. Every single Palestinian deserves justice