Hassan took a bike ride. He is now one of thousands of missing people in Gaza

Early As darkness fell, Abeer Sukayk went to her husband, Ali Al-Qatta, and told him that today was the day they would find their son. Ali nodded silently, and I handed him a stack of flyers. Each of them held a photo of 16-year-old Hassan smiling broadly, shoulders splayed, and wearing a plain red shirt. He looks directly into the camera, unguarded. At the top of the page, in large letters, Abeer wrote one word in dark red ink: Minstrel!– Call.

Abeer watched Ali get into the car with a few close friends and drive away. They set out on a 30-kilometre journey south, from Al-Tuffah, east of Gaza City, to the European Hospital in Khan Yunis. They heard that a group of people arrested by Israel, including children, would be released there.

The gate was already crowded. Families stood side by side, wrapped in blankets to protect against the cold, holding photos and ID cards. Ali distributed leaflets to his friends. When the buses of released detainees arrived, he and the others moved slowly through the narrow gaps between the groups of people. Some of those who had just been released were embraced. Ali waited on the edge of every encounter. “Have you seen my son?” he asked. One by one, people shook their heads. The crowds thinned. It was two in the morning when Ali returned. Abeer watched her husband put the pictures on the table. They stood and looked at each other without speaking, Ali’s eyes far away as if he were entering someone else’s home. It has been 10 months since they were last with their son.

before October 7 attacksBefore a UN panel and a group of Palestinian and international human rights groups decided that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza, Abeer’s life was structured around a good routine. He woke up at the same hour every morning, ate the same foods in the same order, and needed to clean the house a certain way: washing the floor, wiping the table after every meal. When he was 11 months old, Hassan’s parents saw that he was not able to crawl or sit, and that he was not as talkative as his sister was at that age. After a long series of medical evaluations, Hassan, then 5 years old, was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. Abeer says that Israel rejected the family’s request for Hassan to receive treatment outside Gaza. So Abeer began teaching herself therapy techniques, how to build behavioral routines, and how to manage sensory overload. Together, she and her husband, Ali, structured Hassan’s days around safety and repetition, and learned how to fill their home with joy. Hassan laughed when his father sprayed him in the bathroom the way he requested. He showed an endless appetite for flipping through magazine pages and browsing pictures on restaurant menus, and he loved sitting on soft pillows with his mother. “I used to say I have four eyes,” Abeer says. “For him and for me. I never slept.”

Bombs were the first thing that broke Hassan. With each explosion, the 16-year-old shook his hand on his chest and whispered: “Mama, my heart is afraid.” Displacement has broken him again. He screamed each of the four times they had to evacuate. He said: “Why would I leave my house? I don’t want to leave the house. I want my bed.” Hassan, who could not bear the feeling of not washing even for a few hours, spent 10 entire days without showering. One day, as they took shelter at a relative’s house, he picked up a small bottle of water, followed his mother around, and begged for a shower.

By April 2024, scarcity has entered every part of daily life. The famine deepened Israel also cut off Food supplies. Clean water was difficult to find. Abeer lost about 40 pounds. Days before Hassan disappeared, he attacked his mother over what little food she had left, a dry mixture they called bread, made from mixed seeds that were once sold as animal feed, which left her with a foul odor. He did not understand why there was no real bread, no rice, no milk, no meat. Hassan stared at what was given to him, pushed it away, and shouted, “What are you feeding me?” In a moment of complete confusion, he slammed the table on its side and ran out of the house.