Aaed Abu Karsh, from running a shawarma place to scrounging for food to feed his own family

The New York Times reports:
“Aaed Abu Karsh, 35, had managed to carve out a sliver of something like normal life when we first spoke to him last November.

“He was managing a shawarma place in Deir al Balah, one of the few places where ordinary life went on amid the agony all around it.”

“In January, during the cease-fire, he moved home to Gaza City. That was the last good thing that happened, he told us recently.”

Karsh lost his wife’s sister to an airstrike in June and his uncle to another strike in September. He has been displaced four times and wounded twice. 

“The hardest thing is living with the feeling that all you can do is wait for death,” he said.

He no longer sells shawarma to eager customers. Instead, he spends his days scrounging for food, clean water and cash to pay the astronomical prices at the markets.

Karsh was one of nearly 100 people whom Times reporters interviewed recently after writing about them earlier in the war.

More at The New York Times