The rising death toll from Israel’s military onslaught in the Gaza Strip is a tangible, everyday reality for Ibrahim Ahmed: instead of building houses like he did before the conflict, he digs graves.
Ahmed, like the majority of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents, has been displaced from his house and now spends his days at Tal Al-Sultan cemetery in Rafah, preparing rows of graves in the sandy landscape and marking them with cement blocks due to a scarcity of gravestones.
“As a human being who has feelings, it feels heavy to go from building villas and apartments, which I love, to building graves,” Ahmed went on to say.
“My job was challenging, yet I’d leave with a sense of accomplishment. I created new things every day, a different building,decor. I went home in a good mood.”
Now, every day brings dead bodies and processions of bereaved relatives.
“I see different people but with the same faces, with the same suffering. It’s depressing,” said Ahmed.
“We have two mass graves here, nearly 80 martyrs over here, and 100 more martyrs over there.”
