She Lost an Eye to War. Now a Gaza Artist Paints Her Way Back to Life

Gaza / PNN /

Amid the rubble of war in Gaza, Areej Al-Saafin is trying to reclaim what an injury took from her, particularly her passion for painting and the life that came to a standstill after she lost her right eye in a war injury in 2024.

Al-Saafin had been painting since she was 12, moving between charcoal, colours and oil paints before losing her studio, her art supplies and one of her eyes. Her paintings have since become a direct reflection of the pain and loss she has experienced.

Despite the severity of her injury and her limited resources, she returned to painting with whatever paper, wood and firewood she could find, holding on to one dream: to travel abroad for treatment, regain her sight and her life, and return to painting as she did before the war.

Al-Saafin said losing her eye was not the only loss she suffered during the war. She also lost the world she had built over years of work and dedication.

Her studio, she said, was an essential part of her life and identity. She had worked to develop it day after day, filling it with her paintings, tools and everything connected to her passion for art.

The war took away her colours, paintings, drawings and tools, as well as her studio and her eye. What happened, she said, was not simply the loss of material possessions but the loss of part of her identity and the life she had built with love and passion.

Painting after her injury is no longer what it was, she said. Losing an eye has significantly affected her ability to focus, making painting more demanding and time-consuming. Yet she remains committed to holding on to her pencil and refusing to abandon the talent that has accompanied her since childhood.

Every day she spent in her studio before the war brought something beautiful, she said. Painting was a space where she could live and express herself, until the war changed everything and cut short her dreams and ambitions.

Al-Saafin said her experience after the injury has clearly influenced her paintings. Most of her drawings now centre on eyes, sombre figures and characters depicted with a single eye. Other figures appear trapped or imprisoned, while some have eyes stripped of their details and others seem to contain life held behind a barrier that prevents it from breaking free.

She said these images were not initially planned or deliberate. Instead, they emerged spontaneously, almost as an involuntary expression of her experience and what she went through after the injury. Her feelings and pain, she said, found their way onto the paper through the characters and eyes she draws.

When Al-Saafin tried to return to painting after her injury, she found herself facing an entirely different reality, having lost most of her tools and resources. She no longer had charcoal, charcoal pencils, paper, paints or even the canvases she had previously used.

Even the easels and stands she used to display her paintings were gone. Her family had been forced to use whatever wood and other materials they had to make fires during the war, in order to meet the most basic necessities of life.

But her passion for painting drove her to search for any means that could help her return to what she loved. She began collecting scraps of paper, pieces of wood and firewood and trying to use them for painting. Eventually, she found that painting on wood could provide an alternative in the absence of the tools and materials she had previously relied on.

Al-Saafin said she had started again, but with whatever resources were available. Life in Gaza during the war has made everything scarce, she said, forcing people to adapt to whatever they can find, even in the simplest aspects of everyday life.

Despite everything she has lost, Al-Saafin says she has not abandoned her dream. Her ambition now is to travel for treatment and undergo surgery on her eye, and to regain the life she says the war took from her.

She dreams of returning one day to her studio, recovering her tools, colours and paintings, and practising her art normally as she did before the injury. Her talent, she said, is still inside her, and what she is trying to do today is reclaim part of that talent that she feels the war took away.

Between the eye she lost and the studio destroyed by war, Al-Saafin holds on to her pencil as a means of reclaiming her life and identity. Her resources may be limited today, and her paintings and colours may have changed with her experience, but her passion for painting remains.

As she waits for an opportunity to travel and receive treatment, she continues to paint with whatever she can find around her, hoping to regain her eye, her life and her studio, and one day return to painting not simply as a hobby, but as a fundamental part of the identity she continues to hold on to despite everything the war has taken from her.

This report has been produced with the financial assistance of CFI, Expertise France and the European Union. The contents of this document are the sole responsibility of the Beneficiary and may under no circumstances be regarded as reflecting the position of CFI, Expertise France and the EU.”