“While having a joyful family gathering, the ground began to shake as we heard bombs and sirens overhead. Shortly after, the house came crashing down on us while we were eating" he recalled. It was a struggle to get out from under the bricks and rubble but the adrenaline in my body was so high that when we came out from the rubble, I hadn't even noticed that half my arm was missing until my mother ran up to me with concern and fear in her gaze. A shrapnel entered my arm during the bombing that night, leaving me permanently disabled. "In seconds, the life we knew was gone."
The days that followed were a blur of fear and uncertainty. Our family was forced into a concentration camp. "We had no clean water, no clean clothes, no money," he remembered. We lived in a tent, while the war continued around us. There were no doctors, no support systems, and no access to prosthetics. As a child, I had to learn what it meant to live with a disability in the middle of a war zone.