Jihad Afana was in prison when his son was martyred. For a time, he didn’t know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now, two years into his imprisonment, he knows, and he carries a double loss: his freedom and the son he had been waiting to watch grow up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
His wife, Maha al-Aloul, recounts what she has learned about his health. He has lost 10 kilograms. He suffers severe pain in his teeth and his leg, and the food in detention is bad. She has heard that the occupation refuses to treat him. No treatment. No response. Just the systematic medical neglect that runs through the testimonies of many prisoners before him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Israeli occupation forces detained Jihad at Kamal Adwan Hospital during an 80-day siege. They detained Maha’s father and brother the same day. Her father happened to see Jihad there in custody, before anyone else in the family knew he had been taken prisoner. When her father was released, along with her younger brother, he brought her the news: “Jihad is with the Jews.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She didn’t know then that the day marked the start of a long wait and an enforced silence. Or that a parallel loss was already beginning, one whose details would take months to emerge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hearing it from her father was the first shock. “A husband is the support and the backbone,” Maha says. From that moment, she carried the full weight of the household and the children without the backbone she had always leaned on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Before his son was martyred, a lawyer visited Jihad in detention and came back to reassure Maha: “He’s fine. God willing, he’ll be out soon.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Maha had waited 13 years for a son. The boy finally came, a brother to four girls, and Jihad was overjoyed. He had six months with his son before the family came under siege and Maha was forced to separate from him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then the child was martyred.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Word of Jihad came indirectly, from released prisoners. He talked about his son a lot. By the time he got out, he told his fellow prisoners, the boy would be grown, as tall as he was. He didn’t yet know his son was no longer with them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When the news did reach him, he absorbed the shock alone, behind prison walls, with no one to hold him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Maha says she kept wondering what to tell the boy’s father in prison. She dreaded his reaction. “His reaction, thank God… Even though it was hard on him, I was relieved once he knew.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was as if the truth, however cruel, weighed less than ignorance with no end in sight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Maha closes her testimony with words that sum up everything that came before:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“He used to spare me life’s hardship. When he was taken prisoner, I felt life’s hardship. I’m ready to bear life’s hardship, as long as he comes home.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Simple words. But they come from a woman who has shouldered the household and the children alone, lost a son, and now waits for her husband as his body wastes away behind bars. All she asks is that he come home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jihad Afana was in prison when his son was martyred. For a time, he didn’t know. Now, two years into his imprisonment, he knows, and he carries a double loss: his freedom and the son he had been waiting to watch grow up. His wife, Maha al-Aloul, recounts what she has learned about his health. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1635,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[45,41,39,605,604,606,27],"class_list":["post-1634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reports","tag-human-rights-violations","tag-international-conventions","tag-israeli-prisons","tag-jihad-afana","tag-kamal-adwan-hospital","tag-maha-al-aloul","tag-political-prisoners"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asramedia.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asramedia.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asramedia.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asramedia.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asramedia.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1634"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/asramedia.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1634\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1636,"href":"https:\/\/asramedia.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1634\/revisions\/1636"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asramedia.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asramedia.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asramedia.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asramedia.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}