As the skies of Gaza roared with the sounds of distant explosions, Mohamed Hatem gripped onto the frame of a cracked wall on the outside of a destroyed building.
He’s there to further strengthen his muscles. This is one of the most exhausting and difficult gym exercises imaginable, as it requires you to repeatedly lift your entire body weight over a gymnastics bar.
Hatem, 19, doesn’t have the luxury of a bar. All you have is an unforgiving wedge of concrete that can slice your hand in an instant if you’re not careful. But for this teenager who fled the devastated city of Khan Yunis, bodybuilding has become a valuable pastime during the ongoing war in Gaza.
“While exercising, I am trying to escape from a horrible reality,” he told Al Jazeera. “I feel like I’m outside Gaza. This is the feeling that comes over me when I practice bodybuilding.”
With over a year of Israeli artillery, air strikes and ground attacks killing more than 44,000 people and leaving many survivors starving, this young man struggles to cope with the immense stress of life in a war zone. I started bodybuilding. .
Hatem has been displaced 10 times since the war began 13 months ago and, like many others, frequently suffers from severe food shortages.
His real strength lies in his ingenuity. In a small room in his grandmother’s house in Khan Younis, he uses makeshift equipment, including weights made from water bottles, a car battery tied to a rope, and a satchel filled with salvaged items and bricks pulled from nearby rubble. Training using equipment.
This room has become a sanctuary for Hatem, one of the two million people displaced by the war. His family was destroyed by Israeli airstrikes early in the war, and despite limited resources and constant turmoil, he clings to the pursuit of physical fitness as a means of getting back on his feet.
“Since the war began, my dream of building a strong body has faced unimaginable difficulties,” he says. “But I am determined to keep moving forward, using whatever I can find in place of traditional weights.”
According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), Israel’s war in Gaza has “created the following traumatic experiences”:chronic and unrelentingBecause there is no safe place in Gaza and minimal resources available for survival. UNRWA said in August that the war “contradicts the traditional biomedical definition of post-traumatic stress disorder, given that there is no ‘post’ in the Gaza context.”
For Hatem, bodybuilding was his way of life.
“Sport also reduces the tension and fear that we live in and the dark image of our reality and future. I feel psychological comfort through it,” he explains.
Take your “gym motivation” to a new level
With stripping intensifying in Israel and the trapped population severely lacking in basic necessities, Hatem is finding new ways to stay motivated.
he, Instagram There he posted more than 130 videos, sharing snippets of his life, including his workouts and meals of canned beans and lentils, and highlighting the lack of fresh food in Gaza. These videos have captivated over 183,000 people around the world from the United States, Pakistan, India, Jordan, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates to admire his unwavering drive for bodybuilding. Some of his videos have millions of views.
A constant self-improver, Hatem had already taught himself English during the coronavirus lockdown. Aware that many others in Gaza are already creating content for Arabic-speaking audiences, he uses his social media posts to extend his message to a broader global audience. You are choosing that language to communicate. His aim is to use his own story as a bridge to amplify the current Palestinian experience.
“My page is called Gymrats of Gaza,” Hatem explains. “We want to reach people around the world in English and show them that even in Gaza, we have dreams and goals.”
Although the video clip focuses on his strict daily routine to stay in shape in a small communal room where he and his large family try to build a sense of routine, the purpose of the Instagram account is not personal. he says.
“This is a national humanitarian message about the genocide that is happening to us. It is true that it affects me, but I am expressing the experience of people living in war.” Hatem told Al Jazeera.
His bodybuilding journey, which began four years ago, was encouraged by his parents, and the discipline required by the sport has been a positive outlet for Hatem.
It also introduced the business administration student to the bodybuilding icon he seeks to emulate.
“A lot of people who look at my story and what I do say I’m following Chris’s path,” said the six-time Mr. Olympia Classic Physique winner, the world’s top He was referring to Chris Bumstead, who is also the most popular bodybuilder in the world.
“I would say Bumstead is a role model and an inspiration to me in the bodybuilding world,” the teenager added, noting that he has been following the champion’s content long before embarking on his own bodybuilding and content creation journey. did.
“Bumstead is a unique person in the world in his field and an extraordinary professional. I hope to one day achieve what he has achieved,” Hatem concluded.
Challenges of pumping iron during the war
Becoming a bodybuilder in Gaza comes with unique challenges.
Surviving the war meant that Hatem had to significantly reduce the amount of time he spent on daily training from three hours to about 30 minutes.
Due to severe food shortages, 1.84 million out of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million According to the United Nations, Hatem was on the brink of starvation and regularly had to stop training for days at a time. His muscle mass also decreased for several months, and his weight decreased from 58 kg (128 lb) to 53 kg (117 lb), after which he gradually gained the weight back.
The ups and downs and repeated moves are weighing heavily on him.
Hatem remembers the terrifying day of October 14, 2023. Israeli military aircraft fired five missiles over a three-hour period, bombing just 8 meters (26 feet) from his family home.
“We faced a moment where we knew we weren’t going to survive,” he says. During this time, they managed to survive while hosting 50 refugees from the north.
One of Hatem’s most painful moments was when he returned after a trip to nearby Rafah to find his home destroyed.
“It felt as if the world had ended and there was no possibility of a return to normal life. I wanted to retrieve anything from the house, but everything was gone,” he said.
He refuses to mourn this loss through his channels. “There are so many tragic stories,” he says. But despite using a few basic media tools like a cell phone and a small stand, dealing with frequent internet outages, and finding uploading videos to be a tedious process, Hatem has overcome both hope and hardship. We continue to share stories that are equally mixed.
“I want to show resilience and inspire others who have more resources than we do. My dream is to show them what is possible, even in Gaza. It is to show.”
In the brief period of calm that sometimes follows heavy airstrikes, Hatem goes to a gym in central Khan Younis, where he can finally train with proper gym equipment.
“Even when resources are scarce, I still have will,” he says, lifting bricks and water bottles instead of weights.
“I want people to know what we’re going through. But it’s not just about suffering, it’s about finding the strength to live.”
This article was published with the support of: Egabu.
