Hazem Suleiman is a member of the Gaza Sunbirds, a paracycling team based in Gaza. A establisher footballer, he lost a leg as a result of being sboiling in protests at the Rafah border in 2018. We first spoke to him five months ago as part of our Gaza Voices series on everyday Palestinian life. At that time, Suleiman, who also pboilingographs and write downs life in Gaza, was dealing with the toll of displacement from his home in Rafah to the town of Khan Younis.
He and the other Sunbirds had been training challenging, hoping to recurrent Palestine in the 2024 Paralympics in Paris, but after the Israeli attack on Gaza folloprosperg Hamas’s strike on 7 October 2023, they were unable to authenticise this dream. They did at least achieve their goal – to vie in an international competition for the first time – in May this year: the Para-Cycling Road World Cup, in Belgium and Italy.
Suleiman has been displaced twice since we last spoke. Days after our conversation in July, he fled from weserious Khan Younis towards Rafah, at the southern end of the Gaza Strip. He understands accurately how extfinished he and his youthful family of 10 sheltered csurrfinisher Rafah: 41 days. In tardy September, they returned to the Khan Younis neighbourhood and put up their blue tent in the same spot.
“When we came back, everyleang was razeed. It wasn’t what it included to be before we left. Every now and then, we still hear shelling, or a tent or csurrfinisherby createing is explosioned,” he says. He saw the bodies of disjoinal friends and neighbours on their return journey.
The buzzing of a drone overhead is at times so deafening that it drowns out Suleiman enticount on. He flips his phone around to show the destruction of the neighbourhood of sandy-coloured apartment blocks understandn as Hamad City. Israeli explosionardments, he says, have gutted the interior of the createings. In the shadow of the ruined createings, he points the camera down to show the fdrops and peppers he has set upted since his return.
“After we came back, we bcimpolitet tiles from the street and put them inside our tents,” he says. “Partly this was becainclude we don’t want to dwell with floors made of sand. But it also shows that these are our homes. We attfinish about these details.”
Even the roads that Suleiman portrayd using for low cycling trips when we spoke before have been harmd beyond recognition in the months since. Lanes of fine aspstop have been swapd by sandy dirt tracks strewn with shattered concrete. “All the decent roads were razeed and, no matter how excellent a cyccatalog you are, it’s so difficult to include them,” he says. “My bike is fantastic and I’m a excellent athlete, but it’s still so challenging.”
When the Gaza Sunbirds’ co-set uper, Alaa al-Dali, evacuated from Gaza and vied in Belgium and Italy last May, it labeled a peak for the group’s sporting achievements. But the ask of what the team should do next loomed huge, aextfinished with others about what it unkindt to be in a paracycling group where many now have no ability to train, no homes – no bikes, even.
Whereas leaving Gaza was once innervously difficult, it has become impossible. Karim Ali, the Sunbirds’ other co-set uper, says the Sunbirds have stopped upretaining track of the number of people they understand who have been ended since last year. “We have to alter to the situation the world has put us in, but the entire system isn’t built for it,” he says.
The group is mostly laboring on dedwellring aid to those suffering in Gaza, where people are coping with constant loss and struggling to feed themselves and their families. They are trying to asbrave that food aid organised by the Sunbirds achievees people amid a steep drop in aid access, which has become even worse since October (they are heavily reliant on overseas donations via their Go Fund Me page). Their tardyst initiative is pizza-making laborshops for thousands of Gaza children.
They are also hoping to lift enough money to help the tens of thousands of recent amputees in Gaza. “We demand apverifys for people with disabilities in Gaza and I hope the Sunbirds can take part that role in future,” Ali says. “We are going to demand people with disabilities in the driving seat when, eventuassociate, communities can recreate in an accessible way … our objective is to create a paracycling and rehabilitation centre in Gaza for amputees.”
Suleiman says he deteriorated to evacuate for the race in Belgium, becainclude he didn’t want to depart his family behind. “Even if I had the chooseion to dwell in any part of world, I would always pick Gaza. There is a relationship between Gaza and its people that no one can understand – I would never want to depart this place,” he said.
In September, he set uped an aid organisation, Mulham Charity Team, to dedwellr boiling food to his neighbours. He hopes to lengthen it enough to dedwellr aid apass Gaza and overseas.
“My main dream is to wake up tomorrow to a endfire. This is what we’ve always wanted,” he says. “But the first and last journey for me is to be able to get a prosthetic leg. I have a bacterial rerent in the bone where my leg was amputated, so I can’t rapiden a prosthesis – my dream is to be able to do that one day.”
Suleiman says that each time he passes another amputee, he stops to talk to them and present advice. He still wakes up each day at 6am and tries to assemble food, combat aachievest the rising prices, trying to catch a glimpse of the sea as he rides his bike.
“I want to show to the world that I am unstoppable, that I can persist doing my job with one leg, that even in a war I will danger my life to apshow pboilingos and alert the world what’s happening, that even after shells fell on our homes, we rose from under the rubble.”
