From Gaza to Gower Street: meet the student who came from war-torn Strip to UCL

Moving to university wasn’t so easy for Nashwa Skaik, a 23-year-old postgrad studying Foetal Medicine at UCL.

This summer, the latest spasm of violence and bloodshed between Israel and Gaza saw two thousand Palestinians dead, many of them civilians.

Nashwa was on the front line working 24-hour shifts in the emergency room at Al Shifa hospital, the city’s only hospital.

Then, as Israel’s Operation Protective Edge war drew to a close in August, Nashwa won a scholarship to study at UCL. She will return as Gaza’s only doctor trained in Foetal Medicine.

But Nashwa faced a race against the clock to navigate Gaza and Israel and even Jordan’s thick layers of bureaucracy to arrive at Gower Street for enrolment.

She says: “I got my scholarship in mid-August so had to apply for a visa immediately. But it was the war, so everything was closed.

“I waited for the war to end. We don’t have an embassy in Gaza. The embassy is located in Jerusalem. So I applied through the British consulate.”

Nashwa visited Jerusalem for the first time in her life

“I’m very ambitious! I finished medicine so I thought, why not? Why not come and study at one of the greatest universities in the world?”

Nashwa comes from a medical family. Her father is the medical director at Al-Shifa Hospital, the largest in Gaza.

She worked in its emergency room during the recent war in just her second year of residency.

Israeli’s aerial bombardment of Gaza City meant many doctor’s homes were razed to the ground. The hospital was overcrowded and understaffed.

Al-Shifah was woefully overcrowded and understaffed

 She added: “I wasn’t paid in twelve months by the hospital.

“I am single and I’m not married and that’s fine. But some people need money for food and drink.

“I worked there during the war. The other hospitals closed so all the patients came to al-Shifah hospital. It was extremely overcrowded.

“There was a lot of bleeding. A lot of miscarriages. A lot of them have been injured from bombs and shrapnel and destruction. I was working in the emergency room and saw gunshots in the chest, the abdomen.

“Sometimes we would do a post-mortem cesarean section. I would deliver a baby as the mother was dying.

“In this moment you become really strong. We can just try to forget about the situation and just save the life and do everything in minutes…there’s no time to think.”

Your standard commute to work

Nashwa talks about the view from the emergency room overlooking central Gaza City.

There are two windows. One has a view of the hospital’s not-so-rosy garden. It’s a camp for displaced people. They are homeless now, so stay there in tents for weeks.

To the other side of the window, Nashwa sees the morgue.

“You’re delivering babies, watching dead men wheeled into the morgue on one side and then there’s refugees on the other side.”

The war lasted fifty days, but Nashwa believes there were still moments of happiness among the carnage.

She added: “It’s the greatest moment when you deliver new babies to this world.

“There were around 2,000 murders in the war. But during the war we delivered around 3,000 babies.”

We met at Planet Organic off TCR

Nashwa had just weeks to prepare herself for UCL following the ceasefire arrangement. Having been here for six days, she loves London already.

She said: “Everything is simple and organised  And you see someone in a coffee shop, eating in peace. Just watching life happen.

“And I feel proud. I wish I could say, hey, I’m here I’m from Gaza! I’m from Palestine! I’m here and I’m happy!

“I’m a war survivor, after 2004, 2008, 2012… and now I’m a doctor doing my specialisation at UCL.

“You feel freedom. Not only psychological and spiritual freedom, but physical! You want to visit a lot of places. Why not?”