An unknown infant was rushed to a Gaza hospital. A nurse gave her a name, and a home

In late October 2023, Israeli strikes killed dozens of Palestinians in the Sabra neighborhood of Gaza City. Among those wounded was a newborn baby girl — whom rescuers found in a tree.

Paramedics rushed the infant to Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, the Gaza Strip’s biggest hospital at the time, and handed her over to Dr. Nasser Bolbol, who placed her in an incubator.

“I was told she was the only survivor of a massacre,” says Bolbol, the head of the hospital’s premature babies department. The stump of the baby girl’s umbilical cord was still soft. There were traces of milk reflux on her, a sign that she’d been breastfed during or immediately before the attack.

Bolbol recorded her arrival in the hospital’s newborns registry, along with the date and location where she was found.

But nobody knew if her family had survived — and no one knew the baby’s name.

“I myself wrote the word ‘unknown’ on her file,” Bolbol says.

A nurse gives her a name

Thousands of Palestinian children are believed to have been orphaned in Israel’s ongoing offensive in Gaza.

To date, more than 44,000 Palestinians have been killed and more than 100,000 injured by Israeli forces, according to Gaza health officials. Humanitarian groups estimate thousands of young children and infants are among the dead. The war was sparked on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas launched one of the deadliest attacks on Israel in recent history, killing nearly 1,200 people, according to Israeli officials.

Later that same month, when the infant girl was brought to Shifa, hopes were high that the war would end quickly and the newborn’s parents or relatives would show up looking for her.

Instead, Israeli soldiers, pursuing Hamas operatives, invaded the hospital in November, and the baby’s records were lost after intense shooting and fighting took place inside the facility.

“Her file is gone,” Bolbol says.

The baby and 30 other premature infants were evacuated in a high-stakes international operation to the Al-Helal Al-Emirati Hospital in the southern Gaza city of Rafah.

The babies were transferred with only a list of their mothers’ names — something the unknown newborn girl did not have.

In the neonatal intensive care unit, she shared the same incubator with others, as the war continued and more infants were brought to Rafah from Gaza hospitals. Doctors opened a new file for her, indicating she was an “unknown baby — unidentified.”

“Her file only read, ‘a survivor from a massacre in Al-Sabra neighborhood,'” recalls Amal Abu Khatleh, a 33-year-old nurse who was working in the Emirati hospital when the babies were brought in.

Abu Khatleh couldn’t tolerate the term “unknown” for a baby girl. So she decided to give her a real name: Malak. In Arabic, it means angel.

“I have fallen in love with her,” Abu Khatleh says.

The nurse became the baby’s foster mother

Baby Malak shared the same incubator with other infants for two months, but Abu Khatleh worried that she would be exposed to infections and could suffer developmental problems if she were left in the hospital without enough human contact.

“Her day was all about staring at the roof of the room,” the nurse says.

So Abu Khatleh, who is single with no children of her own, asked the hospital to allow her to take Malak home with her. After weeks of discussions, the hospital agreed — on the condition that she bring Malak back when the war is over.

Abu Khatleh brought Malak home and took care of her in Rafah until May, when Israeli soldiers invaded the city. Abu Khatleh and the baby, then about 6 months old, fled along with much of the rest of Rafah’s population. Amid shooting, Abu Khatleh carried Malak on foot until they reached the nearest city, Khan Younis, about seven miles away.

“I was extremely afraid with every single step,” Abu Khatleh recalls. “I was carrying Malak all the way. I took her toys, clothes, diapers and milk. I had to choose between my things and hers. I took hers.”

After they reached Khan Younis, she and the baby went by taxi to Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, where the two have been sheltering since.

A search for surviving family

Abu Khatleh opened an Instagram account, posting videos of Malak and desperately searching for any living relatives. All the comments she has received are of support and blessings, but no leads.

There are no surviving records of new births from the first days of the war, says Zaher Al Wahaidi, head of the Gaza Health Ministry data entry department.

There is also little chance that Malak’s parents had registered her birth during intense Israeli airstrikes in northern Gaza at the beginning of the war, Al Wahaidi says.

“I will keep her if I never manage to find her real parents,” Abu Khatleh says.

A mother-child relationship

In addition to a name, Abu Khatleh decided to give Malak a date of birth. Given her experience with premature babies and their development, she says Malak was likely born around Oct. 23, 2023. And, she says, the double 23 sounded special enough.

Her love for Malak has only grown over time. The baby stays with her sister while Abu Khatleh works during the day.

“When I am back from work, that is party time for her,” the nurse says of Malak. “She gives me a hug and many kisses. She even looks like me now.”

And Malak recently celebrated her first birthday in the two-bedroom apartment in central Gaza where she lives now with Abu Khatleh, Abu Khatleh’s sister and nine other children. She wore a white, frilly dress. There was a cake, popcorn and sweets.

“When I am with her,” Abu Khatleh says, “I forget about the war.”