From Gaza to Brooklyn: Two Women and a Diaspora Kid
A donor-conceived kid bridges the distance between New York City and Gaza
7 years ago I decided to follow in the well-worn footsteps of many other single women in New York City; I chose to have a baby on my own using a donor. I was 34, and had been dating for the majority of my adult life. When I hit my 30s the desire to become a mother slowly overtook my desire to find a partner. I didn’t want to go on dates and sit on hard restaurant chairs across from men I didn’t know anymore. The yearning for a kid became like an open wound; the pain easily activated by pregnancy reveals and seeing other women with babies. I had my own apartment and a job I liked with a stable income, it was time.
If you are unfamiliar with the world of donor-conceived children, there are two ways you can go about doing this: you can purchase sperm from a sperm bank, or you can find your own donor. There are pros and cons to each method, and parents of donor-conceived kids will argue fiercely about the merits and pitfalls of each method. I came into contact with my donor by chance. A friend of mine was also trying to conceive and had found a donor on good-old craigslist. After trying to conceive for several months, my friend found out that she had significant fertility issues. She decided to change course with her life, but asked if I would be interested in talking to her donor, whom she liked and had had a positive experience with. I did the requisite google review of her donor, and felt confident with what I saw. Rami was what I believe people would call a creative; he danced, he entertained, he created social media content. He was tall with long curly hair he mostly wore up in a bun. He was the opposite of me; artistic, spontaneous, and a risk-taker. The decision was easy.
After my son Samir was born, Rami came by my apartment to fill out a page in my baby book with some basic information about himself. Rami filled out the baby book page, held Samir for a bit, and then left. He has since left New York and returned to Spain where he grew up. Rami and I have not stayed in touch, but I reach out via email once a year on Samir’s birthday and let him know how he is doing. Though I don’t consider us friends, I have always seen Rami as an integral part of my son and I’s life story. This past August Rami popped up in my facebook friend suggestions. I clicked immediately. I scrolled over his posts about Gaza, which were similar to my own social media posts, and landed on a picture of two women. One woman was older with short dark hair, and she stood next to a younger woman with dark curly hair. I looked at the two women, staring for a long time at the younger woman. Her face was very similar to a younger face that resided in my home. Same eyes, same cheeks, same hair. I read the caption and learned that Dayya, the older woman, was Rami’s aunt, and Rasha was his cousin. He went on to explain that they had both been shot and killed by an Israeli sniper. The post had been written six months before in February of 2024.
I was stunned. I hadn’t known Rami had family in Gaza. I had assumed that like all of the Palestinians I’d met in Brooklyn, his family was from the West Bank. My unspoken assumption about Gaza was that very few people were able to leave. In his post Rami shared that Rasha had chosen to dedicate her life to caring for her mother, turning down love and career opportunities to remain by Dayya’s side. I thought about Rasha, an unmarried woman over 30, like me. She loved animals, also like me. Rami shared that in addition to her cats, Rasha had a horse that she adored that was killed within the first few days of the bombardment of their neighborhood in Gaza City. I thought about Dayya and Rasha trying for as long as they could to stay in their home, with their garden and their pets, as conditions escalated around them.
According to Al-Jazeera, the death toll in Gaza is hovering around 43,000. In the West Bank around 756 Palestinians have been killed since Oct 7th, 2023. Many believe these numbers to be much higher. A study published by the Lancet indicates that it is reasonable to expect that by the time the conflict* ends, the death toll will be closer to 186,000 taking into account death due to disease, starvation, and including the bodies of the dead that have yet to be discovered. The pictures and video clips of crushed and broken bodies under collapsed buildings, fallen men, women and children shot in the street while trying to reach safety, and people burned alive in refugee tents have plagued the media. I’ve watched in horror with the rest of the world for over a year as the situation has continued to escalate well-beyond my very worst case scenario.
Dayya and Rasha are two of the people behind the numbers and pictures. Before they were murdered in February of 2024, Dayya and Rasha lived together in the al-Rimal neighborhood of Gaza City. The mother and daughter were well-known and well-liked in the community. Some of what I know of Dayya and Rasha comes from an article written by Sami A. Akkeila for the Electronic Intifada. After their death, neighbors shared that Dayya and Rasha considered their community to be family; embodying the Palestinian values of hospitality and generosity. Not included in this article is the fact that a few years before their death, Rasha had secured paperwork for her mother to leave Gaza to move to Canada. Rasha’s sister who had previously escaped to Canada had assisted in the effort to secure paperwork to bring Dayya over. Unfortunately, Rasha wasn’t able to get paperwork for herself. Not wanting to leave her daughter behind, Dayya stayed in Gaza.
After the revelation of Dayya and Rasha’s life and death, I felt compelled to tell their story to anyone who would listen. In his final poem before he was killed with his family in an Israeli airstrike, Palestinian writer, poet, and professor Refaat Alareer wrote “If I must die, you must live to tell my story”. I made pins with Dayya and Rasha’s picture that I wore on my kuffiyeh and later on my coat when fall weather set in. I told anyone who would listen about them, which turned out to mostly be my activist friends that I organized and marched with in Brooklyn. In October I was telling a friend about Dayya and Rasha, and she stopped me to say “Claire!I heard about that mother and daughter story! Were they Christian?”. A few minutes later she sent me a link to a story about Dayya and Rasha that had been published via an independent online news source focused on Palestine.
Reading about Dayya and Rasha’s final days broke my heart all over again. Despite repeated raids in al-Rimal, beginning in January of 2024, Dayya and Rasha refused to leave their home. Eventually Israeli soldiers stormed their house and forced them to leave. They begged to wait until the morning, but the soldiers forced them out. Neighbors reported the women left with tears streaming down their faces. With nowhere to go, they set out to reach Deir al-Balah, 15 kilometers south. The weather was cold and rainy. Unable to move fast (Dayya was 79), the women walked slowly past bombed out cars and houses, and past tanks and snipers. Rasha answered a call from a neighbor around 4:15pm, and all calls after that went unanswered. Once the army announced a withdrawl, people returned to their homes and began to look for Dayya and Rasha. Remains of corpses mauled by dogs were scattered in the street. Eventually partial remains were found that were identified as Dayya and Rasha. Neighbors and friends held funeral prayers for the women at their burial site. A neighbor told the Electronic Intifada that “the women left their home with broken hearts and returned as scattered remains”. A month before they were killed, when Dayya was extremely ill, she made her desire known to be buried under a particular tree in her garden. Her request was honored.
I can’t know for sure if my son and I’s life would have ever intersected with Dayya and Rasha’s. The choices that donor-conceived children make about meeting biological family members vary. In a contract Rami and I signed together, we agreed that at 18 Samir could make his own choice about reaching out. Not that either of us could control him with a signed piece of paper. My son understands that he has a donor; he can already tell anyone who pushes the issue that no, you don’t actually need a “dad” to make a baby, you need a sperm and egg. I have been talking to Samir about Palestine for a few years; its a place and an idea that is slowly solidifying in his mind. He knows that Palestine is a beautiful place, with people that deserve to live peacefully with the same freedoms and access to food, water, jobs, and education that we have here. I believe he understands that we march and make signs together because we want the whole world to care and take action for Palestine. Unfortunately his biggest association with Palestine is that it is not safe and people are in danger. Samir is a kind and curious kid; he loves animals and gardens like Dayya and Rasha did. I’ll never know, but I like to imagine that Samir, Dayya, and Rasha would have all enjoyed each other. Maybe Rasha would have shown Samir her horse. I mourn what could have been for all three of them. I suspect that one day Samir will set out to see Palestine and find his relatives in Gaza. In a way, he would be following in my footsteps. As a Jewish young adult I went to Palestine to learn and see for myself. I can’t help but wonder if when Samir makes it to Palestine, there will be anyone left there for him to find.
*conflict is not the word I would have chosen here, but am quoting the Lancet study. I have used and will continue to use the word genocide to describe the mass murder in Gaza.
