Dr. Ahmed Seyam: Suddenly I hear airplane, smell of dust, fire. I cannot see anything. Children should never endure in this situation. Even when I give them painkillers, they suffer. They look at me with eyes that ask for comfort, not medicine.

Gloria Zhang: Hello, besties. I’ve been away from the podcast and social media for personal reasons. But the guest and topic for today is just too important so I’m back only to release this exclusive interview that was live out of Gaza. Now the reason we were able to do this now is because of the current ceasefire, it gave us a chance to finally interview my dear friend Dr. Ahmed Seyam, who is a Palestinian surgeon at Doctors Without Borders, currently in Gaza during the war with his wife and three children. Doctors Without Borders is a humanitarian organization that provides emergency medical care to people who are affected by conflict, epidemics, and disasters. In this episode, you’ll sometimes hear it referred to as MSF, which is the French acronym for Doctors Without Borders. Dr. Seyam is an incredible human being. He sacrificed his freedom, courageously chose to stay behind in Gaza during the war to perform emergency surgeries and save countless lives, and tragically a few months later there was an explosion near his home, which left his children injured and his wife paralyzed and in a wheelchair. Now this situation is almost unthinkable for many of us, yet Ahmed’s story is one of thousands who have experienced this war. I’m grateful he’s alive and sharing his story here on the Inner Child podcast. I’ve been trying to help his family evacuate so if you have any information or want to help please click the GoFundMe link in the show notes. As you know this show is all about healing childhood trauma yet children continue to be traumatized every single day in events worldwide. Many people don’t know that nearly half of Gaza’s population are children under the age of 18. This war has left at least 65,000 people dead, numbers climbing as we speak, with over 85% of the land destroyed. Now with more amputees than anywhere around the world. So let’s call the spade a spade. What the world has been witnessing is a mass child sacrifice ritual in broad daylight. Okay, if you have been feeling confused about what you’ve read about this war it’s not your fault, because our social media and news cycles are being polluted with propaganda. Multi-million dollar deals have been signed to change the algorithms and even influencers are being paid over $6,000 per post to push certain war narratives. This is exactly why a few episodes ago I said that we must be very wary of what we’re being drip-fed in the news and I think that everybody needs to get off social media. Now you may disagree with my politics and my beliefs. But everyone agrees that ultimately, it is the innocent civilians and children who pay the price when it comes to war. Normal people like you and me, daughters, sons, mothers, fathers, who are just trying to live their lives, who have nothing to do with the decisions of leaders. Those who survive will have to carry that PTSD and trauma into the next several generations. The people, and that is what today is all about. Today you will be hearing some difficult but important truths directly from the humanitarian front lines in Gaza and I recommend that you watch the YouTube or Spotify version of this, as we are including some photos and videos that Ahmed shared of his family and city. So on a final note, Bestie, please send good energy or prayer with this episode. Share it online with friends so that this story is not forgotten. Take action in your community, use the links that we’ve included in the show notes, and hold your loved ones tight. Because if there’s anything that you’ll take away from this episode is that you don’t know what you have. You don’t know what you take for granted until it’s gone. So let’s begin the interview with Dr. Seyam: right after this intro.

Gloria Zhang: Are you okay?

Dr. Ahmed Seyam: Yes, I’m okay.

Gloria Zhang: Great. Let’s begin. Dr. Ahmed Sayum, it’s so good to see you again. I’m so happy that we can finally do this interview now that there’s a ceasefire. Good to see you.

Dr. Ahmed Seyam: Good to see you too, Gloria, and I’m so happy to speak to you and speak in your podcast, and it is time for ceasefire now, you know, in Gaza. It’s a great time we waited for two years.

Gloria Zhang: Yes, yes. I’ve been so worried about you and your family and right now you are calling us from the hospital, right?

Dr. Ahmed Seyam: Yes, yes, yes. I’m in the wards now. I’m working in a clinic for MSF in the area. It’s a humanitarinl area, it’s near Rafah City.

Gloria Zhang: Thank you. That lets people know where you’re currently living. So let’s go into the questions. You have worked for Doctors Without Borders and you chose to stay behind to help your community, when other people were leaving Gaza, what made you decide to stay?

Dr. Ahmed Seyam: Really, it is not an easy choice to stay in Gaza in this war. As you know, every minute here you are facing a lot of danger every single day. But because I’m a surgeon, I know my place was here. I have a lot of patients here need me, as you know our patient depends maybe in a single operation a single stitch can alive them, or a single heartbeat. And also our patient couldn’t leave and they keep coming to our clinic, keep coming to the hospital, even when they are knowing that there is a shortage in drugs, shortage in medicine, shortage in instruments. But we are the only the only hope for them.

Gloria Zhang: Yes, you said there are lots of people who keep coming back to the hospital. What do you do for – what can you do for those patients?

Dr. Ahmed Seyam: Seriously, I give them all the care they need. I am surgeon and I’m working in operation room. I was the doctor whose responsibility minor surgery operation in this situation as the hospitals are full of patient full of injuries, cannot be done in the hospital in the main hospital. So we did it we did it here in the MSF clinic. It is a clinic like a tent, like you see, like a tent, a small tent, but it’s prepared for doing a minor surgery. Any patient wounded from blast injury, from gunshot, from explosives, and need an urgent operation for life-saving, we did this operation in hospital, I’m working in the Al-Aqsa Hospital. in middle area and before in Shifa Hospital in Gaza, and now after we displaced again, I returned to work in Al-Aqsa Hospital, but not full-time, just two times a day, like myself.

Gloria Zhang: When you go to work and you wear the doctor’s uniform, how do you feel? How do you, what motivates you to continue seeing so many difficult situations?

Dr. Ahmed Seyam: You know, every patient I see, he remind me why I stay here, why I didn’t escape Gaza and I didn’t flee to a safe area. We are working with almost nothing, totally collapsed health system. Everything is broken, no equipment, no drugs, no anesthesia even. Sometimes there is no electricity or clean water. But people, as I said before, still come, still hope, still survive. You know, our hope. here is contagious and every successful surgery feels like a victory over death itself. Not only for the patient but also for a very meaning of life in Gaza.

Gloria Zhang: That’s so powerful. I think it’s difficult for most people to imagine what you have to go through every day.

Dr. Ahmed Seyam: Yeah.

Gloria Zhang: Do you feel like you’re, when you trained with Doctors Without Borders, did it prepare you to face this? Or was it, did it feel so much more than, than you could have imagined?

Dr. Ahmed Seyam: Yeah, and Working with Doctors Without Borders started since the war started. I was working for just the Ministry of Health in Gaza, but when I started to work with Doctors Without Borders, everything changed for my mentality, for my perception. It is like a humanitarian. It teach me how to be patient, how to be empathic, and my training also changed. I become understand how it is a humanitarian medicine. Even my patients, I start to treat them with another face, with a face of kindness, face of humility. As I think they need me, they need me more now in this situation. We started, and also here in MSF, we started from nothing, by the way. No supplies, no structure, just we was having the determination. At the first time, MSF Spain, when my friend, my colleague called me, I asked him to open a proposal for any INGO, as there is a lot of cases was suffering from infected wound, wound from shrapnel from lung operation. So he told me that there is a friend of him working with MSF Spain. He told him that they may open a clinic and we can offer a proposal for them if they can allow us to work, and they accept that. No INGOs was working at the first time in Gaza because they all afraid from the explosion, from the gunshot, every type, and also, there is no coordination with the IDF, and we start from nothing. We start just with determination, and they support us with logistics, and an instrument, and everything, and now, we are treated thousands of patients every day here in our clinic, and now we have more than three clinic in Gaza in the south, and also we support the Nasser Hospital and the pediatric and maternity hospital, and this is a big victory for MSA.

Gloria Zhang: That’s incredible how a human spirit can do that is amazing. You guys work so hard. I just want people to really understand the reality of what’s happening. What was the most difficult injury that you saw or the most difficult case that you saw in the hospital?

Dr. Ahmed Seyam: Every patient have special case, special injury, and every patient considered himself is the most difficult case. But for us, for doctors, for me, I always consider the children, children with burns, with amputation, with a trauma, always consider them a the most emotionally effective and I give him all my sympathy. You know, children should never endure in this situation. Even when I give them painkillers, they suffer. They look at me with eyes that ask for comfort, not medicine. Sometimes they smile at me, call me doctor and hold my hand. I try to smile back even when I’m breaking heart, I’m breaking inside. Only children, also maybe the female patient because, you know, they lose their dignity you examine them in this situation as you are working in tents, we are working with a little bit privacy, not the full privacy for patient. The most affection for me is children, the most thing that play with my emotion because maybe because I am a father, I have three children and also I have three injured children and I know how every father, every family feels when they have a child that may have burns, may have explosive, may have amputation, how they are suffering from being a family of an injured child.

Gloria Zhang: Yes, your three children and your wife were injured in this war as well. I know we have talked about that. Are you comfortable sharing what happened to your family?

Dr. Ahmed Seyam: Yes, of course, I will share with you the story. Where the story began, it was offered for me to leave Gaza in April 2024. I could have left Gaza, but I lost my chance because I decided to stay with my patient, and also I feel that I will not help in anywhere, in any place in the world except in Gaza. But after that, I blame myself a little bit. When in June 2025, on the 27th of June, I was off duty. I reached home at 12 o’clock, and then after I got some rest, I slept a little bit, and after two hours of sleeping, suddenly I an airplane that is a rocket coming, a rocket coming toward us. I open my eyes, suddenly there is all things black, smell of dust and fire. Everything is messy. I cannot see anything. I just touched my phone to search for the, to open a flash, to open the torch. I trying to find my wife, she was, she was sleeping beside me, but she was like mumbling with her mouth saying, “I’m okay, I’m okay, where’s our children?”. I didn’t recognize that I was hearing my children’s voices playing in the home, but after the room, everything going black, I’m just jump and running to see where is my children. There was totally all of them under rubble. They was covered with sofa, the television, and a lot of stone. First I remove my little angel, her name Julia. She is three years old. Julia is my little princess as I said. She was under rubble, too. She was crying in a weak choking sound from smoke and dust and she was saying where are you Baba? She was bleeding from facial wound. I just carry her from the rubble and move her to a safe place. Then I back to find my two son, Khalil is my oldest one he’s eight years old before that but now he become nine, he was okay but in psychologically shock with multiple wound all over his body and dust covering all of his face and his hair. He told me where his brother was sitting and Kareem is the last one. He was totally disappeared in the rubble. Kareem was suffering from shock and intrathoracic hemorrhage and multiple shrapnel over face and body. He had a leg fracture. In his position, he was mumbling like, “Please forgive me, Mama.” I don’t know why. Maybe because he was chatting with his mama before the explosion. I carried him from home to hospital. He was saying the same word, but he was unconscious. His condition was bad. and for a doctor knowing well about explosive trauma, I was terrifying because I was just worried about his brain because it is a sign of intracranial hemorrhage. I carry both of Karim and Julia going to the stairs from the fifth floor to the zero floor, carrying him and run to the ambulance. I know it was a very difficult situation and yet I cannot forget any of these details from the tragedy day. But you know, I kept working as a surgeon. I didn’t cry at all. I had to stay strong for my kids. They see me as a hero. As you know I’m their father and they will be, inshallah, for lifelong. But one day I finally broke down I cried a lot alone. I think it was all the pain I had put it just to survive and that’s why I blame myself a lot for involving them in this catastrophic situation. I always blame myself now, and really I’m waiting any chance to evacuate them outside, any chance to move them to a safer place. This is our story.

Gloria Zhang: Thank you for sharing this here, me hearing this again it doesn’t make it any easier but you did your duty for your country and we don’t know what’s going to happen next. I think you made the best decision that you could at the time. I’m so grateful your children were taking care of. So, please don’t blame yourself. You are a hero.

Dr. Ahmed Seyam: Thank you. Every doctor is a hero. Anyone who stay here for humanitarian work is a hero because two years was too much for this genocide. Every day we was facing a lot of danger, even with our moving from place to place. Before the last time we had the incident, we faced a three-time explosive near us. But this was a tragedy.

Gloria Zhang: You’re still a loving father and husband, and that doesn’t change.

Dr. Ahmed Seyam: Yes, of course. Thank you, thank you.

Gloria Zhang: You’re amazing. What was life like before the war? So that people really understand you know what Gaza used to be like, what used to be normal.

Dr. Ahmed Seyam: Our life in Gaza before the war was so beautiful and everything was like a joy. I was waking up in the morning early, taking my wife to her work. She was working in a municipality of Gaza, and dropping my children to the school, going to my work, and then after work, I back to bringing them from school and from my wife’s work. It was an easy life, a life with hope. We were spending a lot of time with our children. We were always going outside with them to the beach, to shopping. We were trying to just make them feeling happy with this family. I was having a beautiful home and everything was okay. As a Gazan people, we love Gaza. We love our city, and also we are human. We want to live. We want to be loved. We want peace. You know, it was a simple life. Gaza may be small, but for us, it was home. We tried to build happiness in a world that’s full of maybe fragile things, and you know, it is not the first war for Gaza, it is the fourth one. Every time we renew, we like the phoenix. We are coming from ashes, and I have three homes before this home that damaged in war. But every time we can rebuild our home, repair our cars. I have three cars before that also destroyed from rockets and explosives. They destroyed it all. Today, people who displaced newly from Gaza to the middle area and the south, they’re back to Gaza today. One of my friends called me and told me, “Ahmad, don’t back again.” Told him why? He told me everything they changed from the last time. everything destroyed. There is no Gaza now. So I’m so upset, so sad, so disappointed. That’s why I’m not happy to the end of genocide, just for stopping killing, but not happy because all of our city was destroyed.

Gloria Zhang: I’m so sorry. It’s so tragic. There’s so much fake information and propaganda on social media and the news. What do you want the world to know the truth about Gaza? What would you like to say to the world?

Dr. Ahmed Seyam: I want to say that it’s not a place for war. The people here are full of life, full of love for being alive, being happy, working. They are all of them passion for working, and all of our people are smart. Even all the international worker who’s come to Gaza during war, they love to work with us. Most of us have a master’s degrees. Most of us have a doctorate even. But our situation that always prevent us to travel, to flee from this city, this is make it very difficult. You know, Gaza also is not a headline or a conflict zone. We are living through one of the most brutal wars. Or, as they say, it is an ethnic cleansing or a genocide. You know, hundreds of bombs, even stronger than Hiroshima, falling on us. But we still dream. We want peace, safety, and the future for our children. Just like anyone else in this globe, we have a red blood like anyone of the humans outside Gaza. I just want them to know that we are human like him, like everyone in this world.

Gloria Zhang: What is your hope, Ahmad? What is your dream that you hold for the future of Gaza, the future of your family?

Dr. Ahmed Seyam: Right now all my thinking, all my dream is simple. I say for bliss. I want my children to grow up without fear. To forget this PTSD. They are confronting a lot of difficult time. Every time they are thinking, is they bombing us again? Would we alive again Baba? Would we go outside Gaza or we will die here in Gaza. They are just thinking about this. They forget what is school, what is learning. So all I need now is to evacuate them outside, to be in safe place, to live like any other children in the world, to be alive again. Just this. Nothing else.

Gloria Zhang: I think that’s so important for people to hear. The impact of this trauma on these children and the next generation.

Dr. Ahmed Seyam: All our people now complain from PTSD. I read a lot of books during war about PTSD, how body and the brain react to after trauma. It is exactly said about the symptoms that we’re facing with patients now, and especially the patients who suffer from blasts, explosions and gunshot. You know, when I treated any patient, he is feeling injured from any unbeloved action. If he feels like I am angry when I’m dealing with him or I am not happy when I’m dealing with him, he start shouting and crying. I want another doctor, I want someone who care of me, and this is a sign of PTSD. It will not appear now, it will appear later, after completely war ended, after they have a calm life, a more stable life, but now everyone is just thinking about the war is going, maybe dying any moment. We just want to fight against our survive. We want to fight against our famine. We want to find food for our children, a place to save us. So they will start to complain from PTSD later. After everything calms down, the war is ended.

Gloria Zhang: That’s right. Everyone’s in survival mode right now. I just want to check with you about it’s almost 11 30. Are you okay on time?

Dr. Ahmed Seyam: It’s okay. If they didn’t ask for me, it’s okay.

Gloria Zhang: Okay. All right, just making sure.

Dr. Ahmed Seyam: no problem.

Gloria Zhang: Now we are going to share the link to your fundraiser that your brother put together for you, Dr. Ahmed Seyam. Is there anything else, what can listeners around the world continue to do to help put an end to this, help support the the citizens of Gaza?

Dr. Ahmed Seyam: Maybe, they can continue to speak about us, and even if the war ended, our struggling, our complaint, our suffering will not end. We still have to build our city, we still have a collapsed health system, we still have a collapsed learning system, and we need a lot, we need a lot of support from everyone in this world. You know, maybe if every voice in this world keep talking about us, they will give us a solidarity and a strength to continue. Humanity shouldn’t have border, especially with Gaza, because what we face is too much, too much use. No any war before like this war. Right now we need a lot of support and not to forget Gaza. I don’t know if there is anyone with power to act is listening. I’m asking for help to evacuate my family, my wife. As you know, my wife, I didn’t talk about her. She was the most serious injury, by the way. She have two spine, two vertebrae spine fracture, and one of them was brushing the spinal cord and I don’t know maybe will lead the weakness later and she will cannot even move her lower body like paralysis but till now we are okay need we need just need a surgery to fix the vertebra and also she was having a fracture in the thigh, the right thigh. It was a complicated fracture. Fracture of double face, double fracture, a shaft and the neck of the femur. She underwent a surgery for nine hours. She’s suffering a lot. She’s frustrated from being unable to walk. She’s a smart one, she’s the data supervisor in MSF. They called her the queen of data here. But now she’s disabled, without work, and this affect her mentality a lot. She cry twice per day before she was crying more than that. I keep support here, I keep telling her that we will be okay, we will travel soon. But it is now three months since the incident and no one asked about us, even no country asked about us. MSF tried a lot to evacuate us to any country, but now I’m just… sending a hope or a shout for anyone who can act, any power to evacuate us, to do a surgery for my wife, also help my children to be safe again, Help us get any humanitarian asylum, that’s all.

Gloria Zhang: Yes we are gonna put links to Dr. Sayam’s Instagram page. You can connect to him there if you have further information, and also your GoFundMe link. So we’re raising money to support his family to be able to evacuate and until that’s possible even just for food and resources. So please, to those listening, please donate generously if you can. We’ll also include the link to Doctors Without Borders, and of course, personally, I will still continue to help you and your family as much as I can.

Dr. Ahmed Seyam: Thank you,

Gloria Zhang: We’ll, yeah, we’ll talk more on WhatsApp. Anything that I can do to support. support you guys.

Dr. Ahmed Seyam: You’re amazing. You’re a kind person, a human being, Gloria, and thank you for everything. Thank you for interviewing me and for helping me.

Gloria Zhang: Yeah, it’s absolutely my pleasure. Any last words before you go back to work?

Dr. Ahmed Seyam: I will keep working. I will keep helping my people, just, I will never blame myself for being here to help my people, but it’s a blame that my children also deserve to be in safe place.

Gloria Zhang: Absolutely, yeah, absolutely. You are a hero in my eyes. Both you and your wife are such incredible people. I pray for you and your family. I wish you all the best and really hoping with this ceasefire that something will start to happen. With this episode out, more people will hear about your truth and your story. So thank you for being here.

Dr. Ahmed Seyam: Thank you a lot, and you, thank you for interviewing, and say hi to your family from me.

Gloria Zhang: Thank you. Talk soon.