Asmaa Tamous: A Life Between Hunger, Healing, and Survival

“I’m Asmaa. I’m 27. I’m from Gaza. A refugee from Majdal, now displaced from Beit Lahia. I used to introduce myself with my degree and job title. Now I start with what I’ve lost because that’s how people here know we exist.”

For over a year, Asmaa has lived in displacement in southern Gaza. Separated from her entire family parents, siblings, the place she once called home, she wakes up each morning in a stranger’s house, in a stranger’s city, and heads to work as if life hasn’t broken into pieces. She works as a Nutrition Coordinator for an international NGO, providing therapeutic nutrition services in a field hospital operated by Al-Awda.

Her job is not just clinical. It's intimate. It's urgent. It requires her to meet people in the rawest moments of their lives, mothers who cannot feed their children; children whose bodies are shrinking before their eyes; families who have survived bombings only to be defeated by hunger.

Before the war, Asmaa had opened her own private nutrition clinic. It was her dream project, built with care, knowledge, and ambition. One month later, it was gone. Bombed. Flattened. Years of study, planning, and hope wiped out in seconds. Like so many things in Gaza, it didn’t even leave rubble behind, just absence.

In the first months of the war, she had no income, no work, and no clear path forward. But when she heard of a volunteering opportunity through a local initiative, she didn’t hesitate. “Even if it wasn’t my field, I needed to do something,” she says. “I needed to feel useful.”

She joined a team distributing hot meals, clothes, and basic supplies to people in displacement shelters. That experience rekindled something in her. It reminded her why she chose this field in the first place not for a title, but to help people survive. Soon after, she was recruited again, this time back in her professional role, supporting nutrition programs for children and pregnant and lactating women.

Her work took her from shelter to shelter, tent to tent, sometimes walking through rubble, sometimes stepping over shrapnel. Danger was always near. “Once, a family fight broke out in one of the camps while we were distributing supplements. Shots were fired. One bullet hit the front seat of my car, right where I was about to sit.”

Her most unforgettable encounter was with two little girls, ages 4 and 1.5, diagnosed with severe malnutrition. Asmaa tracked their progress weekly, but they weren’t improving. Eventually, their mother confided the truth: their father had been selling the therapeutic food, and she, overwhelmed with despair, had attempted suicide. She simply didn’t know how to keep her children alive.

Asmaa and her team stepped in, not just as nutritionists, but as human beings. They coordinated psychological support for the mother, arranged daily hot meals for the family, and provided household essentials. Slowly, the children began to heal, not just physically, but emotionally. The mother, too, began to believe in life again. “That was the moment I realized our job is never just medical. It’s human.”

But Asmaa’s own life isn’t simple. She lives alone in displacement. No gas. No fuel. No security. She cooks over firewood. She hauls groceries through streets lined with destruction. She works full days, then returns to a borrowed home to face the silence. Even access to basic food is a daily challenge. “There’s no meat. No chicken. Most days, we just eat falafel or canned food, if it’s available.”

And still, on a daily basis she shows up. Not just to hospitals, but to homes. If a child misses an appointment, she follows up. If a mother is too depressed to speak, Asmaa sits beside her, quietly. Her belief is simple: you have to go to people to help them. You cannot wait behind a desk.

What keeps her going? The thought of her family, still in the north, under siege and starvation. “I always think: maybe if I help someone’s child today, someone else is helping mine.”

She’s now not only delivering services, she’s also shaping them. Her role now allows her to design programs that actually respond to the needs on the ground. “I’m proud that I’m not just a number on payroll. I get to decide how we help. I get to make sure it’s meaningful.”

But the cost is heavy.

As a woman in this warzone, she never travels alone. She can’t. “It’s not safe. I always have to bring two men with me when I go to the field because the threats aren’t just airstrikes. They’re theft. Violence. Chaos.”

Still, she insists: women have a unique role in this crisis. “We work with women and children. That means we understand their fears, their needs, their silences. And they trust us because we are them.”

Her dreams have shifted. She no longer thinks of degrees or career ladders. “My house is gone. My clinic is gone. My neighborhood doesn’t exist anymore. I just want to find a way out. A way to live again.”

And if she could speak to the world?

She would ask:
“When will you see us as human beings?
When will our lives be worth safety, worth dignity, just like yours?”