War's trauma apparent in portraits of Gazan children

The sole survivors of the family, she and her father heard the fading cries of her siblings buried nearby.Suzy’s mother, her two brothers and two sisters -- ages 9 to 2 -- died in the May 16 Israeli attack on the densely packed al-Wahda Street in Gaza City. Where when war erupts, there is no safe place -- and where four wars and a blockade have crippled life over the past 13 years.In Gaza, Abu Jamei says, “life never goes back to normal.”In the hours he and his daughter spent trapped in the rubble, Riad Ishkontana recalls hearing his older daughter Dana, 9, and youngest son Zain, 2, calling for him: “Baba, baba.” Later, Suzy would tell him that she could feel Zain under the wreckage. ___LAMA SIHWEIL, 14When the 2014 war broke out, Lama Sihweil and her family fled their home in Beit Hanoun when the Israeli army invaded, joining some 3,300 Palestinians crammed into the U.N.-run Abu Hussein school in the Jabaliya refugee camp. It’s left him feeling terrified, and unsafe.___ELIEN AL-MADHOUN, 6Elien al-Madhoun was not yet born when her father lost his home in the 2014 Gaza War. Young as she is, she doesn’t entirely understand life and death.But in May, she screamed out at the sounds of airstrikes and shelling in Bait Lahia in northern Gaza, says her father, Ahmed Rabah al-Madhoun.He tried to shield her from talk of war, tried to keep her busy with games. But older cousins, huddled around her, talked about “airstrikes, missiles, martyrs openly because nothing is really hidden from children.”Nine people died in the neighborhood, including relatives.“When nine homes are completely destroyed next to one another and my daughter sees this, she can’t understand what happened,” he says.Her father says he doesn’t know what the future holds for her.“We envy the people who’ve been killed and have returned to God. We envy them because they know their future,” he says. He’s survived four wars in Gaza, and with each war he grows more afraid, more insular.When he was 9, the bedroom where he was sleeping in the Jabaliya refugee camp was hit by a missile, says his mother, Amal Srour. Abdullah also saw a family of six -- a father, a pregnant mother and four children -- crushed to death under the rubble of a home that belonged to his grandfather during this last war. He doesn’t like to sit longer than 10 minutes in any one place, rarely smiles and sleeps next to his mother, by his much younger siblings.“After this war,” says his mother, “he’s regressed to a child of 5 years old.” ___THAIM ABU ODA, 5For so long, Thaim Abu Oda’s childhood was sheltered, pleasant. There were trips with his father and younger brother to the nearby pool, to the beach and to the few play areas available in Gaza; his parents have steady incomes, and they live in the heart of Gaza City.But for 11 days in May, the boy’s life was devastated by war -- by the terrifying boom of fighter jets overhead and the bombs that shook his neighborhood.He stopped eating.