Gaza City - Maha al-Rubaie wakes shortly before dawn in the damp former classroom where she lives.
She stretches out her hand to touch the chest of the baby sleeping in the metal crib beside her. She feels the rise and fall of his breath, then settles back on her thin mattress, not to sleep but to watch.
Maha speaks in a low, warm voice. She smiles often and walks with slow, careful steps. Maha, 56 and unmarried, never expected she’d become a mother at this age. Yet she is now “Mama” to Hamza, an orphan who never knew his parents.
Hamza’s wide eyes roam the room, and when they settle on Maha, he smiles.
“When he opens his eyes and looks at me, he murmurs with his lips, ‘Mama,’” she says with a shy smile. “I’m used to my brother’s grandchildren calling me ‘Teta’ [Grandmother], … but he will call me Mama.”