From Loss to New Life: A Gaza Double Amputee Finds Strength in a Small Garden

GAZA, Gaza Strip / PNN /

Report by Nesma Al-Harazin — For Palestinian Mahmoud Abdel Karim Skik, losing both legs in a wartime injury was only the beginning of a much larger struggle.

The double amputation not only changed how he moves through the world. It took away the job he relied on to support his family, disrupted his daily life and left him confronting a question that weighs heavily on many people living with war injuries: How do you provide for your children when the work that once sustained your family is no longer possible?

Skik, who worked in construction before the war, is now trying to reclaim a sense of purpose and independence through something much smaller — a garden.

With little more than limited space, simple tools and whatever materials he can find, he has turned to growing plants as both a source of activity and a way to remain productive.

Skik was injured on Nov. 7, 2023, he said, and underwent a double amputation.

He says losing both legs has made returning to his former profession extraordinarily difficult. Had he lost only one leg, he believes, returning to work might have been more possible. Losing both, he said, changed the course of his life completely.

Before the war, his days revolved around work and providing for his children. Now, he says, the hardest part of his injury is not simply the loss of his legs but the loss of his ability to earn a living for his family.

He says people with disabilities, particularly those injured during the war, face shortages of essential services and support and have become among the most marginalised groups amid Gaza's deepening hardship.

For Skik, the economic consequences of his injury are immediate.

"As for income, I am zero — zero," he said.

Without a regular income, he said, he has been forced to sell some of his belongings to buy basic necessities.

Providing food and water for his children, he said, has become a daily struggle.

He recalled seeing things in the market that he and his children would like to buy but cannot afford. When that happens, he tries to comfort them with a phrase that carries both tenderness and resignation: "We'll find it in heaven."

The things his children long for, he said, are often things he would like for himself, too.

Growing something from almost nothing

After his injury, Skik found an unexpected outlet in agriculture.

What began as a hobby has become a way of adapting to his new circumstances — and of creating something productive from what remains available to him.

He uses small areas around him and whatever materials and tools he can obtain to create makeshift spaces for planting.

"I plant whatever I can provide in terms of seedlings and resources," he said, describing his efforts to turn limited means into something capable of producing life.

He says he has received little outside support and lacks a donor or organisation that could help him expand the small agricultural project.

Still, he continues.

Among the crops he tends are green peppers. The plants require regular care, attention and treatment, and small peppers have begun to appear on the plants, offering a modest but tangible sign of growth.

For Skik, the garden represents more than agriculture.

It is a way to remain engaged, to produce something with his own hands and to resist the feeling that the injury has brought his life to a standstill.

His message to other people with disabilities and those wounded in the war is simple: an injury should not mean the end of life.

He urges others not to surrender to despair, but to look for ways to develop their abilities and make use of whatever resources remain available to them.

Even in the most difficult circumstances, he says, people can search for new ways to continue, create and produce.

For a man who lost both legs and his livelihood in a war that has upended nearly every part of life in Gaza, Skik's small garden has become an act of persistence — a reminder that even when much has been taken away, the desire to provide, create and carry on can remain.

This video was produced with financial support from CFI, Expertise France and the European Union. The beneficiary is solely responsible for the content of this document, which in no way reflects the views of CFI, Expertise France or the European Union.