Muhi—Generally Temporary

Muhammad (a.k.a. Muhi) is a cherubic Palestinian toddler with an infectious laugh and a life-threatening immune disorder. With inadequate medical care available to him at home in Gaza, Muhi was transported to an Israeli hospital as a baby for emergency treatment that included amputation of all his limbs. He has lived in that hospital ever since, running gleefully through its corridors in his prosthetics; it is the only home he’s ever known. But while the hospital is able to keep Muhi alive and well, it also keeps him and his devoted grandfather, Abu Naim, in a bizarre state of limbo. In Gaza, says his mother, “the boy will die.” In Israel, Abu Naim is denied a visa or work permit. Stuck on either side of a fiercely guarded checkpoint, their family is indefinitely torn apart. As the Israeli-Palestinian conflict rages around them, the no man’s land of the hospital walls that Muhi and his grandfather inhabit is a strange source of both medical salvation and uncomfortable contradictions, where Muhi bounces between Hebrew and Arabic, the Torah and the Koran. With both empathy and precision, Jerusalem-based journalists Rina Castelnuovo-Hollander and Tamir Elterman place one family’s unique story within the crucible of the relentless Mideast strife that impacts everyone in its orbit.