Oceans of Patience: Linda Zaqout

Oceans of Patience: Linda Zaqout

Linda Zaqout never imagined her clinic would close because of war. That her children would sleep in a tent. That the path to her work that she once did in a hospital, would turn into a dusty road crossed by danger and mice.

But that is what happened. And still, she continues.

For over a decade, Linda had been a pharmacist and humanitarian. Her work always stood at the intersection of medicine, awareness, and service. Whether training youth in reproductive health or running her own nutrition clinic inside Al-Sahaba Hospital, she was devoted to helping women, especially mothers and pregnant women to find strength, safety, and healing through health.

When war came, everything collapsed. Her clinic shut down. Her home was no longer safe. She fled south with her husband and two children, aged five and ten. They began life again in a tent. But Linda didn’t stop working. She couldn’t.

She joined the International Rescue Committee’s emergency nutrition team. Now she began her own battle not behind a desk, but in the field, walking through camps, coordinating with displaced communities, and identifying children and mothers who were slipping through the cracks. Her role became urgent, mobile, relentless.

“Just being in this war zone is terrifying,” she says. “But nothing is harder than when a mother turns to you crying and says, ‘Take care of my child. I can’t give him anything.’”

Linda faced her own grief too. She lost her father during the war, “a piece of my soul,” she calls him. The sadness nearly broke her. But then she remembered the mothers, the babies, the people who needed her. And she got up again.

“Every time I help someone, I feel his spirit touch me. I feel him telling me, ‘I’m proud of you.’”

As a mother herself, the separation from her children was one of the deepest wounds. She would leave them behind in the tent, praying they were safe while she crossed checkpoints, dodged risk, and walked for hours just to reach a camp in need. Some nights, she'd return to daily chores with no electricity, no running water, and sometimes-she jokes- “a surprise mouse waiting for me in the tent.”

Despite it all, she pressed forward. “Those tears from mothers gave me energy. Because I know that feeling too. That helplessness.”

She built deep trust with the community. Families began calling her even outside work hours, especially those she’d treated before the war in her clinic. She answered. Always. She never stopped offering consultations, even by phone. “My work didn’t pause because the bombs started falling.”

She adapted. Grew stronger. And somewhere between firewood, field visits, and fighting grief, she became a symbol of continuity for many. “I have gone on many adventures,” she says. “I am proud of them. They taught me patience. They taught me that life has many secrets.”

The greatest challenge? The fear. The distance between her and her children. The primitive transport. The long walks through military checkpoints. And the constant, gnawing uncertainty of whether she'd return home.

But Linda knows her presence matters. “We need care. But we are strong. We are oceans of patience.”

To other women, especially those afraid to keep going, she says:

“You and I are a source of life. Do not surrender to fear, sadness, or loss. Transcend. Begin again. War has stolen from us, yes. But we will fight it by serving, by healing, by answering the voices that call for help. You are always influential. Never forget that.”

Her hope for the future is simple: to live again in her city, Gaza. In a safe home. With her family, her friends, and the children whose faces shine again.

And her message to the world?

“You have let us down.”