10/03/2026
Walking through the rubble of Yarmouk is stepping into a living nightmare. Mountains of debris cover what was once a vibrant camp, and trying to piece together the memories of war—the sexual violence, the kidnappings, the terror—is almost unbearable. This horror was real.
Dr. Khaldoun, a urologist, lived through all of it. He wasn’t born in Yarmouk, but he spent almost his entire life there, even during the siege. He treated patients while hunger claimed lives, while terror ruled the streets, and bombs destroyed thousands of homes. During the siege, people had nothing. “The only things that were free and available were air and death.” Food was scarce, and the plant they called “bird’s feet” became their only source of nutrition—even though it caused acute kidney failure. Hospitals had no dialysis machines, and Dr. Khaldoun improvised treatments for dozens of patients. For six months, that plant was all they had to eat.
Sexual violence was used systematically as a weapon. At checkpoints, women faced harassment in exchange for bread—or even ci******es. Some were kidnapped and r***d inside Al-Basher Mosque, and sometimes loudspeakers broadcast their screams so the entire camp could hear. Extremists punished civilians mercilessly: one cousin was thrown from a fifth-floor building for alleged homosexuality, and a young man accused of being the passive partner in a homosexual relationship was executed by ISIS despite Dr. Khaldoun’s medical report stating there was nothing conclusive.
ISIS terrorized homes and clinics, forcing women to cover their faces, men to grow beards, and interrogating Dr. Khaldoun for issuing medical reports to protect civilians. “Within a week I had written hundreds of such reports. ISIS began to suspect something was happening.” He spent two weeks in prison, a week under torture and a week under interrogation, before they released him because they could not prove anything ⬇️
