"The story of the infant Sand Bulbul"

"The story of the infant Sand Bulbul"
"He remained alone for an entire night under the bombardment and returned to his mother's arms alive. The infant Sand Bulbul — a voice that broke through from beneath the rubble and death to embrace life."
His faint cry cracked through from beneath the rubble, slipping between the crushed stones and collapsed ceilings — the infant Sand Bulbul clung to life.
Three missiles fell upon him when the Israeli bombardment struck the “Dar Al-Arqam” school shelter in Gaza City’s Al-Tuffah neighborhood the first time. Then five more missiles rained down, turning the shelter into a mound of debris.
He spent an entire night beneath it — still sitting on the small tricycle he had been playing on before the strike — in a miracle that revealed divine care and power.
Alone, far from the warmth of his mother’s embrace, she burned with anxiety above while he endured the horrors of darkness, cold, and the endless explosions that wiped out every sign of life — except for his heart, which kept beating.
While the family was preparing his shroud after countless desperate attempts to find him, believing he had vanished or been hurled far away by the force of the blasts, Sand was still there — alive beneath the ruins.
The entire family spread out, searching tirelessly through the rubble, across neighbors’ homes, and in the nearby streets — beneath every stone and corner. They searched every inch of the place until despair began to creep into their hearts.
But his mother’s heart refused to accept that fate. She insisted that her baby was still alive, urging her sons to keep looking. She feared he might be hungry, thirsty, or cold, pleading with them to bring him back into her arms.
At that moment, her request seemed almost impossible to her sons — a desperate question lingered in the air:
"Did you find him... as remains of a child? A martyr? Or alive?"
After long hours of searching every corner of the destroyed “Dar Al-Arqam” school in Gaza City’s Al-Tuffah neighborhood, Malek Hassouna, the baby’s uncle, called out to his friend Musab Al-Dadda, who was also searching for his own sister among the western ruins of the site.
When Musab told him he hadn’t found any child, Hassouna turned away, tears escaping his eyes. He began walking back toward his nearby home, his last hope fading that the baby could still be alive.
But he had taken only a few dozen steps when a faint sound pierced the silence — the cry of a child seeping from beneath the stones on which Musab and his friend stood.
Musab bent down, pressing his ear against the nearest spot in the rubble, straining to listen. The sound echoed again — a baby’s cry.
Stunned, he turned to his friend, eyes wide:
"It sounds like… a child is alive?!"
His friend, equally shocked, replied in disbelief:
"What did you say?!"
Back in his mother’s arms at home, the infant Sand — not yet a year old — now plays on a small chair in his family’s house next to the school, unaware of the horrors he lived through and miraculously survived.
His uncle Malek, sitting beside him, describes it as “a miracle that revealed the power of God.”
Malek recalls, “The bombing was massive, bodies were scattered everywhere, and chaos spread amid the fear of another strike. I managed to get my sister and her children out — they were injured — but in the chaos, we lost baby Sand.”
A tone of joy rests upon his lips, lighting up his face. “We had counted him among the martyrs after losing all hope of finding him,” says his uncle. “But the next morning, we renewed the search and suddenly heard the faint cry of a little child. We dug and found him trapped between two collapsed ceilings, covered in dust and rubble. I carried him back to his mother — it was an overwhelming moment of joy. She embraced him tightly. We washed him, changed his clothes, and fed him, after a whole night he had spent amid the cold and destruction, surviving repeated bombardments.”
Beside him sits Islam Bulbul, the twelve-year-old sister, gently rocking baby Sand on her lap while waiting for their mother to return. She coos at him despite the pain piercing through her wounded head and body. “When the first bombing happened, dust filled every corner of the school, bodies and limbs were flying,” she recalls. “I was injured. I looked at my mother — she was wounded and had burns across her back. I ran outside screaming for help. People came and took me to the hospital. I didn’t see my brothers or my father then.”
The grandmother now cradles the baby in her arms, playing with him and preparing his food. She takes a deep breath, heavy with the sorrow of what the family endured — the long search, the sleepless night, and the waiting. “We thought we had lost him, that he had become a martyr,” she says softly. “But in the morning, his uncle heard a child’s cry during the search — it was him. Everyone shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’ and thanked God that he had come back alive.”
The baby survived death by a miracle, protected by divine care. His father now lies in intensive care in critical condition, while his other sister is injured. His mother moves between home and hospital, struggling with her own wounds that keep her from caring for him — after a full day he had spent away from her in unimaginable hardship.
The grandmother hopes the wounded will recover, the family will be reunited, and the child will once again grow up in the warmth of his parents and home