Motherhood in Her Hands

“I see my children with my hands,” says Rawan al-Moussawi. Each night, her fingers trace the features of Zainab and Hani. “I try to estimate their heights and how much they have grown, measuring them against the images etched in my memory.” Her greatest joy is seeing them in her dreams.

Zainab rests her head on her mother’s lap as Rawan caresses her hair. “I’m not used to her with short hair. I often ask those around me to describe her so I can picture her.”

Seated in the living room of her new home in Nabi Chit, in the Baalbek district, Rawan faces a large painting hanging on the wall. With quiet certainty, she begins describing the artwork without seeing it. After the 2024 Israeli war on Lebanon, she asked her husband to salvage what he could from the ruins of their first home in Hermel. From the rubble, he managed to recover her favorite painting, “The Carpet Market.”

Rawan’s love for photography began in childhood. At 10, she received her first camera and quickly became the unofficial family photographer, capturing candid moments at every gathering. 

“It saddens me that I can't record my children in their everyday moments, like I used to,” she says. Her dream of building a visual archive for them, something they could look back on in the future, has given way to a more fragile form of keeping: She holds their faces in memory alone, afraid that time will blur their features.

Rawan grew up among 16 boys, becoming the center of attention in her family. Her grandfather was especially fond of her, and she inherited his laughter, his kindness, and his way of speaking. In his final days, he urged her to give her only daughter, Zainab, a brother.

Now, her grandmother cries whenever they meet. “She tells me, ‘I wish I could give you my eyes, my child,’” Rawan says. “We were afraid that my permanent blindness would shock her, so I tell her, ‘I will get my vision back, gradually.’”

Rawan was still a teenager when a classmate noticed her on the last day of the only year he spent at her school. Abu Hani was just 17. “From the moment I saw her,” he recalls, “I knew she would be my wife.” That brief encounter led him to seek her out, and through his letters, a five-year, long-distance love story began.

Unable to complete her nursing studies during her pregnancy and the COVID-19 pandemic, Rawan devoted herself to raising her two children. At home, she found another source of joy. “I found my own pleasure in cooking,” she says with pride. “From the earliest days of my marriage, I took on the most complex Lebanese dishes and mastered every one of them!”

Rawan first encountered the pager during the final phase of the Support Front for Gaza, when her husband had to keep it with him as developments on the ground rapidly evolved. That Tuesday afternoon, she was in the kitchen with her son, while Zainab played downstairs at her grandmother’s. Rawan was making mulukhiyya for the first time, a jute leaf stew her husband disliked and had long discouraged her from cooking.

“The pager rang. I sat Hani in his high chair. I looked at him — not knowing it would be the last time — and ran to the living room. Before I could press a button, the device exploded in my hand.”

When the ambulance arrived, Zainab stood to the side, her eyes fixed on her mother’s bloodied body. She thought her mother was dead. The family could not determine what had caused the massive explosion until they saw victims with similar wounds arriving at the hospital in droves. They were unable to process the severity of Rawan’s injuries. All they hoped was for her to emerge from surgery alive after they saw her face “open like a book,” in the words of her husband.

Her husband could not accept the news of her blindness. He consulted every doctor he could find, even as the health sector came under severe strain during the war. But they all confirmed the diagnosis. Recalling those first days after the massacre, he swears, “The injury of my brother or father would not have devastated me like this. God tested me with my heart’s greatest love.” Despite the shock of her injury, he remained steadfast, until his own tears nearly choked him, he says.

He traveled with his beloved Rawan to Mashhad, where they stayed through a long course of treatment. There, Rawan found solace and comfort in being close to the shrine of Imam Reza. As she gradually regained consciousness, she came to understand the severity of her injuries: She had lost her sight, her face was severely injured, and one of her hands had been partially amputated.

In the hospital, her dreams often carried her home. “I would be standing in the kitchen, squeezing mulukhiyya leaves between my palms,” she recalls, lifting her hands.

“I would break down in my room, screaming:‘I didn’t lose my eyes and my hand — I lost my motherhood!’”

During their daily calls, Zainab became attuned to changes in her mother’s condition. “Mama, your voice is louder today,” she would sometimes say. “Is there blood in your mouth? Can you walk? I love you and I miss you.” She would ask for video calls, but Rawan would sidestep the request, blaming a faulty phone to avoid showing her the extent of her injuries.  

“My daughter tried, in her own way, to understand that I was still alive,” Rawan says. Fearing that her grandchildren might forget their mother’s face, their grandmother showed them pictures of Rawan every day.

When they first met again after Rawan’s return from Iran, Zainab was startled by her mother’s appearance and recoiled. “It was as if she had suddenly grown up at that very moment,” Rawan says. Her strong-willed daughter transformed into a sensitive and protective guardian, attentive to her mother’s comfort and quick to remind others to do the same.

Hani’s adjustment took longer. Having been forcibly weaned from his mother after being deeply attached to her, he needed time to accept his “new mama,” Rawan says. It pains her to know that her youngest will have no memory of the life they shared before he turned three.

For months, Rawan was deprived of hearing her children’s “Mama.” “I would break down in my room, screaming,” she says, “‘I didn’t lose my eyes and my hand — I lost my motherhood!’”

The wounded mother is now trying to reclaim the motherhood she was robbed of. She and her two children are inventing a new language to share. “Mama dousi, Mama dousi!” (Mama, touch!) has replaced “Mama shoufi, Mama shoufi!” (Mama, look!). Her husband encourages her to perform the small acts of help for the children, like fetching a glass of water for her daughter, even if they take longer. “Time after time,” Rawan notes, “Zainab would return to ask my permission before doing anything, just as she did before.”

“Mama, where’s your hand?” Hani asks. Zainab answers for her: “Israel broke it. Just like it broke our house.”