Since the beginning of the war in Gaza, Yusuf Hamash has been a master of good timing and good luck. We did a story about him a few months ago. Let me remind you for a minute of who he is and how capably he got his family from place to place. Hamas attacked Israel on October 7. Yusuf fled his home on October 8 because he was afraid that Jabalia, where he was from, was going to be bombed. And the next day, October 9, Jabalia was bombed. As the war moved, he moved a second time, down south to a city called Chan Yunes. Then Israel dropped leaflets from the sky telling everybody to evacuate Han Yunis immediately to get to safety. Further south in Rafa, Yusuf packed up the car that day, his wife, Manal, his kids, his mom, and made his third move. And this is around the time that he started having conversations with one of our producers here, Hanajafi Walt. He told Chana that he knew his sisters, Rinheim. Yunus needed also to go to Rafa. And he kept wheedling, arguing, pleading, making promises, wearing them down. And they still did not move until an airstrike hit the building next to them.

Terrifying, right? Yousef raced to where they were. And as soon as they saw each other, Yusuf and his sister shared their relief by being exactly how they always are with each other.

The first thing I said today when I met them, there is no discussion. We are leaving.

So you didn't, like, hug them and cry and say, I'm so glad you survived? You said, no, get in the car.

No, we have a different type of relation. It's not about hugging them. I was laughing. You should have died. I should be in the morgue now. This is how I'm with my sisters.

And did they laugh? What did they say about them?

Hadir was like, ah, you know, actually, they will start to give me orders quickly. You need to talk to our cousin because he was hosting us. You need to invite him. Also go to our uncle Ayman, because they want to.

Finally took his sisters to safety in Rafa, in a tent camp that he built for them. This is back in December. Over time, Yousef's tent camp of extended family in Rafa grew to 60 people, with Yusuf managing it as mayor, repairman, caterer, driver, healthcare provider. And then on the same day, Yusufs sister, Asil, had a baby, bringing the population of the tent camp to 61. The prime minister of Israel announced he was planning to evacuate Rafa and evade the city where Yusufs family and over a million other Palestinians were living. Yusuf was facing moving everybody for a fourth time. And hes always been the one whos made this call for his family. Yusuf is the one who decides its too dangerous to stay where we are, and this is when we have to go. It has to be now. And this is where we're going next. But this time, Yusuf didn't know where to go next to keep everybody safe. And together they've gone as far south as you can go in Gaza. There really might not be another place to run to, he told Ghana back then.

Actually, to be honest, I don't want to think about that because I know there is no solution. And unfortunately, this time, I'm completely useless because I ran out of options. So what I'm gonna do.

I have never heard you talk like that, Yusuf. I've never heard you say that. You're always the guy that's like, yeah, I'll figure it out. I'll call so and so tomorrow or, no, we don't have it right now, but I'll figure it out.

I don't have options ahead of me. When I have options, I'll start to think deeply about it. But up to now, I'm completely useless.

But what's one other option? There was just one that Yusuf had never seriously considered. They could try to leave Gaza, which might seem like an obvious choice that anybody would want to do, flee the place where bombs are falling. And it's getting harder and harder to find food and drinkable water. But it's not an obvious choice for Yousef and for lots of people as your hero today, what happens when Yusuf gets pressed into a fourth move, one that he has deeply mixed feelings about and is not even sure he can pull off? And that's to try to get his family out as quickly as possible before Israel invades the city where they're living. Time, he knew, was not on his side. And if you think you can imagine what that entails, let me tell you, you really do not know the half of it. You're about to witness feats of ingenuity, strokes of luck, and big piles of cash on a deadline against enormous odds. And also, youll see how hard it is on this family to make this decision, how even trying to go tears them up tears Yusuf up from WbeC Chicago to cisamerican life.

Im Ira glass. And with that, ill turn things over to Khama.

Youssef did not want to leave Gaza where hes from, a place where he knows everyone, knows every system, has connections everywhere. His job is doing humanitarian work in Gaza for Gazans and his entire family is in Gaza. A core part of Yusufs identity is that he takes care of the family. So Yusuf had no plan to leave, did not even want to think about leaving Gaza. And then one day in February, he found out he might leave Gaza. He was in the car with his wife, Manal, and their kids.

He was going with Manel to her parents. We're visiting her parents. And I had my daughter Ilya, five years old. Ilya telling me that we are gonna travel to Egypt.

That meant to you? They're talking about it during the day and she's overhearing it.

Yes. So I understood that when my daughter came to ask me, it means that they reach the limits and how they want to do it.

Youssef did not realize that a conversation had started among the women in his family. There wasnt so much happening behind his back as just away from him in the places he wasnt. Hi, Manal. Hi, Manal. Ive heard so much about you.

Me too, my dear. Ive heard a lot about you.

Manal says Yusuf had told her and his mother he didn't want to leave, but if they ever wanted to leave Gaza, he would make it happen. And Manal and his mom said, no, their whole family is in Gaza.

We felt it was wrong to travel and leave them behind.

Emanal knew, like everyone thinking about leaving Gaza knows if she left, there was a good possibility she'd never come back. So, no, she said she didn't want to leave, and she meant it. But then Manal thought maybe the idea stuck to her. She thought of it when her children screamed through bombing or when they begged for chicken instead of more canned food. When she noticed Ilya had forgotten all of her Alphabet. And she thought of it when she spent the entire day looking for wood to boil water so her kids could drink. She worried, what if they ran out of time? What if the Israelis showed up before Yusuf had another plan? Then Manel mentioned all of this to one of Yusuf's sisters, Asil. Asil is the sister who is most like Yusuf, decisive, a problem solver, a planner.

I went to Aseel. She was the first to encourage me. She said, let the children live a good life. Go, leave. She encouraged me honestly. Asil is the closest to me because she's been my friend since childhood. I consider her like a sister, my favorite friend and the best friend I have for her to encourage me to do it, that was very good for me because she knew what my interests were and told me my best interest was in leaving Gaza. I thought we should harden our hearts a bit and live for the sake of our children.

The process of considering leaving Gaza in this war is not just one of weighing options, one item after another. It's also getting people's blessings. It's a series of permissions. There was a seal, gave her blessing. Eventually, the other sisters did, too, knowing that. That they were not gonna go, couldn't go. They had their own extended families and lives in Gaza. Yusuf's mom, after some persuading, agreed to go with Manal and Yusuf and the kids. So it was decided. Manal told her kids they were going. And for her, that was the happiest moment. The relief of being able to say to her kids, this will end for you. They were excited. So excited that Ilya, the five year old, ended up breaking the news to her dad in the car before Manal even had a chance to tell him. So you're thinking about leaving when? Soon. And how?

First of all, it's very, very expensive. Very expensive. It's a very long process. Unclear process, actually. You know, there is a lot of playing here and there. I try to not ignore it, postpone it. Unfortunately, when I think about the decision itself, it's. I get lost quickly because there is loads of details behind that decision. It's really difficult. But making that decision is not getting alone with my personality.

It's not getting along with your personality?

Yes. 160 days of war, and that wasn't enough to raise the idea in my head that I should leave Gaza. Leaving now, it's kind of. I'm escaping my responsibility towards my sisters, my responsibility toward my job, my responsibility towards my friends, who I'm supporting, but I'm standing ahead. My responsibility towards my children. It's very, very. I don't know, it's very difficult decision if you put these two responsibilities in front of you, and you have to choose.

This was March. Israel continued to say, our plan is to invade. Rafael Yusuf knew if they did invade, they might close the border. There was limited time to act. He agreed it was the right choice for his children. And yet everything about how this move was happening was different. Slower than I'd seen Yusuf act through the entire war. Not that he was stalling. He'd made some calls. He was going through the steps. But old Youssef would have made a thousand calls, checking all the angles, calling in favors, urgently reading everything available about what Israel might do next and when. And now this Yusuf did not sound like a person who knows? There may only be a small window to make your next move. And it's easy to be too late.

But for me, to be honest, I'm not thinking about it deeply. And I'm very sorry, and I know it's a wrong way, but for me, the only thing that I can do is to keep avoiding thinking about it until it became more closer. I will do it. I'm starting the process and all of that. Yeah, it's very long process, very complicated process.

Youssef couldn't talk about the process, how they'd get out on the record. He worried justifiably that any public statement could jeopardize their chances of getting out. What he could say was that he had paid to register his family to leave and that at some point, his family's names would appear on a list of people allowed to cross the Rafa border. But when that would happen, unclear. Another week passed, then another. Those blessings Manal had collected from everyone in the family, they meant it. But the longer this wait went on, the blessings got a little worn. Youssef started seeing it when he checked in on his sisters.

One of the incidents happened. We had an issue between my sister, one of my sisters and her husband. And when I went there, I had to solve the issue there. And I found out that my sisters were complaining. Nah. So he's leaving. He's leaving us here with endless circus circumstances, blah, blah, blah. And they were a bit annoyed. So I was like, okay, now you were pushing for that, and now you are objecting that. Then I found out it's a moment that they were angry and all of that, and it's fine. I know how they feel about it, and I know how they are scared. And I believe they have the right to be scared. It does feel me guilty. It makes me feel guilty. But I am already guilty from the beginning, so I really.

You already feel guilty?

Do they feel guilty?

He was not doing his job, keeping them safe and together. But while he waited, Youssef really did try. On the safety front, he threw himself into making sure his sisters would be okay without him there. He lined up a million backups. A guy with a car in case they needed to leave quickly. A guy to help with broken phones, with Internet problems. He told friends, I'm going to be calling on you. You need to look out for my sisters. He set up a contact at a currency shop so he could send money from Egypt. And he stashed emergency cash with several different people he trusted.

Yeah, there is a lot of things had to be put in place and to be designated for someone because I found out that I was doing a lot of things.

You have definitely been doing a lot of things. I would think you would need at least a dozen people to do all the jobs you've been doing.

I believe a hundred people would never do the job with love and passion as I was doing it. It was always part of give me energy, always when I am managing things for them. That's the difference between me, me doing the job and 100 people doing the job.

President Biden was warning Israel not to invade Rafa. 26 EU countries issued a statement saying an invasion of Rafa would be catastrophic. Yusuf continued to wait. There continued to be bombings, drones, gunfire all the time. But also something new that Yousef noticed happening around him in Rafa and at the family's tent camp. A slow motion collapse. Every day, Yousef would notice a new deterioration of just daily life. There was no trash pickup, no police or services, nobody regulating traffic or businesses. There was no governance. One day, he'd get a call that someone's mother in law used the shower when it wasn't her family's day. And by the time Yusuf arrived, the conflict had exploded for another day.

So my brother in law had a fight with a neighborhood, one of the neighbors and my two brothers in law, beating that guy and insult him in a bad way. And it happens that he's a friend of mine, and that was difficult. They had to intervene between both of them, apologizing here and there, trying to find to be mediated between them.

What did their fight about?

Small children had a fight. They went to speak with him. They didn't like the way he responded. It resulted any clashes by hands. Today I have another one with one of the other brother law Ahmed would be another neighbor for another stupid reason. The circumstances and what we are going through is pushing us to become unstable mentally. So everyone is under huge pressure from the amount of responsibilities that he has to do, or just to move from a place to the other. Just trying to get cash from a bank or an ATM or. Everything is very dramatic.

The more of this Yusuf saw, the more he settled in to the decision to go.

Now it's really common. We see people with guns, a lot of disputes between families, a lot of killing crimes, looting. And that's affecting the entire society itself. People are fighting for no reasons. Now. A few days ago, we had one of the. We had water trucking. So they had a lot of humanitarian organization have provided water trucking that they send drinkable waters by trucks to these areas. We had a small dispute on the line where people put their jerry cans in line. Small dispute to have resulted. Seven people killed. It's simple as that.

What happened?

I wasn't there, but I was hearing the shooting. It's next to us directly. It's like a hundred meter away and, you know, lots of ambulances. What turned that fight is just a small line in front of drinking water. So that's one of the things that pushing me to. I have to rescue my children from that.

But Yusuf, you've seen israeli bombs destroy homes. You've seen much more dramatic than that. Why did that get to you?

That's a good question. It feels different when you look to it as your own people. Then, you know, I don't justify for the Israelis what they are doing and what they are committing in Gaza. But when with all the aggression that they are doing, it's a bit different when the way you see it, when you see among your own people. But societies can easily be fragile and destroyed, like our society is destroyed now.

Seven weeks after Israel announced plans to invade Rafa, Yusuf and Manal were still waiting. Every night they would check a telegram channel called the the Landport Rafa crossing around 10:00 p.m. it would post screenshots of a printed list of names. You'd have to zoom in on the photo. And if your name was on that list, you knew to show up at the Rafa crossing the next day. You'd been granted permission to cross 300, sometimes 400 people a day. Yousef and Manal's names were never listed. But Yousef started seeing the names of people he knew had registered not long before him showing up on the list. By the end of March, he told me it must be close. How are you feeling?

And it's happening and so I feel excited for that.

You feel excited?

Yeah, kind of afraid and excited time. So I'm going from nowhere. It's like I'm abandoning a lot of things here in Gaza. My social status, my add value, my job, my career. So to a new journey. And unfortunately, until now, I don't have any horizon where I'm going. What's the plan?

I'm surprised to hear you say you're excited.

And excited in a weird way. Okay. It's like I want it to happen and it's like when you are going to get a needle or there is a pain that you go through it and I just want to do it.

Oh, like when you're getting a shot and you just want it to be over.

Yeah, exactly.

So that's not really excited. That's like dread.

I don't know.

That sounds more like this is not my language. It sounds more like dread to me than excitement. Nervous? Nervous, maybe.

It's kind of, yeah, I just want to do it. Before I did the registration, I was like, okay with it. I didn't think about it a lot, but since I registered, it became like a pain that I just want to.

Finish it, just want to be on the other side already of whatever is going to happen.

Exactly.

What is this? This wait to be placed on a list. What is this? And you have to pay to get on the list. Why? There were, at the time, over a million people living in a city that was about to be invaded. There was one way out of Gaza. I wanted to understand what was this opaque process that Yusuf was waiting on and could barely talk about.

Hannah Jaffe wall coming up, the actual price to get somebody out of Gaza. And yes, they're gonna want that in cash. No wire transfer, no credit card, no mobile payment. Good old fashioned cash only. That's in a minute. From Chicago Public radio, when our program continues.

My name is Thomas Gibisneff. I'm a journalist at the New York Times. I served in the Marine Corps as an infantryman. When it comes to reporting on the front line, I think nothing is more important than talking to the people involved. You know, hearing their stories and being able to connect that with people thousands of miles away. Anything that can make something like this more personal, I think is well worth the risk. New York Times subscribers make it possible for us to keep doing this vital coverage. If you'd like to subscribe, you can do that@nytimes.com. subscribe.

This is american life from Ira Glass. Today's show. We're returning to Yusuf Hamash and his family. Am Rafa, who've been caught up in this war that began October 7, when Hamas crossed into Israel, killed nearly 1200 Israelis and took over 240 hostages, and has dragged on for nearly nine months now. Over 37,000 Palestinians and over 1500 Israelis dead and people like Yusuf and his sisters trapped in the middle of the fighting. And back in February, when Yusuf decided to try to leave Gaza, leave others behind, it was hard getting everybody on board, handing off responsibilities, but also it was just literally hard to leave. It was hard to get out. Yusuf was cautious when it came to talking about this part of the process. So Channe started asking around, how exactly does it work? How did a person get out of Gaza with the clock ticking, everybody wondering when and if Israel was really going to do what it announced it was going to do and actually invade Rafa? What procedure do you go through? Who do you call? What form do you fill out to leave Gaza? Here's Hannah.

You know, it's not a clean, defensible operation when nobody who touches it will talk about it. I spoke with Palestinians who went through the Rafa crossing or were trying to. People who've reported on the system, people who work inside it. Almost everybody didn't want to talk publicly. They all worried about pissing off the wrong people in the egyptian military and intelligence. The first detailed document I read about how the Rafa crossing works was an investigation by a group of reporters at a site called the Organized Crime, corruption and reporting project. And even they, the people who authored the report, did not want to be named.

You can just say that I'm one of the OcCRP reporters who worked on this investigation.

There were several reporters working inside and outside Gaza. I'm going to call this one Nya. Nya explained. After October 7, when Hamas attacked Israel, officially, Palestinians in Gaza with no other passport were not allowed to leave through the Rafa border. Israel closed every other exit point. But pretty soon, these ads started popping up online, offering to get people out. They were for brokers, people calling themselves travel agents or travel coordinators. Nya pulled up a couple of the ads while we were talking travel in luxury, your dignity and pride intact.

And really, I mean, it's like they're so creepy and tacky at the same time. I mean, wait, let me see if I can find it. It was very funny. Okay, there's one called the king's coordinations. It says, the strongest coordination on the level of Gaza. And then it says easy and guaranteed. And it has a photo of the sphinx and then a plane over that sphinx, and then a guy looking very modern, you know, wearing a rucksack on his back and orange jeans. It looks so funny.

Why is that so funny to you?

Because, I mean, the country is. I mean, Gaza is. Is a place of death and destruction, and the sphinx is next to him, and the plane flies over the sphinx.

Like he's going to see the pyramids with his camera around his neck.

It has nothing to do with the reality.

Every war has its own manic economy. These travel coordinators were sometimes charging $2,500 per person, sometimes 5000 depended who you asked and when you could send the money from your phone or hand it to a coordinator in Gaza as best Naya and the other OCCRP reporters could find out. A lot of the money seemed to go to egyptian intelligence, although Egypt has publicly denied this. And the price rose over time. A few months after the war started, we called one of the brokers ourselves and asked, what exactly is the price now? And he said, sometimes at 7010 or twelve, $12,000 per person. An astounding number. Before the war started, the average person in Gaza made $3,700 a year. It was very difficult for Palestinians trying to leave to tell who was legit or to price shop. People gave their money to brokers who disappeared. It was the wild west. And then the entire system changed. Egypt controls the Rafa crossing. Here are some things Egypt did not want. Egypt did not want Israel pushing Palestinians from Gaza into Egypt. It didn't want a refugee crisis. It didn't want Hamas getting a foothold in Egypt. Egypt also didn't want to look like it was supporting the displacement of Palestinians by facilitating their exit out of Gaza.

And last, Egypt definitely did not want to look like it was collaborating in a black market to charge Palestinians tens of thousands of dollars to save their lives. By the beginning of this year, it did look like that. By February and March, there were reports that the main company offering travel coordination at the Rafa border was making a million dollars a day off Palestinians. The manic economy was reined in. New rules. No more hiring brokers in Gaza to help you register to leave. No more paying by phone. No more free for all bribes. At the border. There would only be one company allowed to register people to leave Gaza, an egyptian company called Hala, with close ties to the egyptian military and security services. And now if you wanted to register, you needed to send someone to the hallah office in Cairo in person. And not just anyone, a first degree relative. And you'd need to pay in cash. $5,000 for an adult, $2,500 for a kid. American dollars only. It's like a dare. How could anyone in Gaza pull this off? This new system for getting out of Gaza kicked in just as Israel announced its plans for an offensive in Rafael.

Just as Manal told Yusuf she was ready to leave a new, much more rigid system that made it much, much harder to get out. Youssef couldnt talk about how he raised that much money in dollars and got it to the hala office in Cairo and how he did it fast enough to register to get on the list in order to maybe make it out in time. Most Palestinians in Gaza didnt want to talk about any of that either. So I reached a palestinian outside of Gaza on the West bank.

Okay, so first we set up the GoFundMe page. And like, that was a whole. A whole thing, an ordeal of itself.

I knew this system was outrageous, but I didn't know no until I talked to Bushra. Bushra Khalidi lives in the West bank in Ramallah. She's palestinian. Her husband's family is from Gaza. And Bushra wanted to help them get out seven people, $30,000, which she didn't have and had to fundraise.

So I couldn't say in my GoFundMe page that I lived in Palestine because Palestinians are not allowed to receive any funds from GoFundMe. And they actually emailed me and said, because you're in a risky area, blah, blah, blah, you cannot. And then I had a co sponsor with me from the US. Eventually, I found somebody. I found, it's a long story, short.

Version, she needed someone else to help her set up the GoFundMe page and the way she found that person, her brother in law is in a band that tours and knew someone in the US who could help them set up the page pretty quickly, talking to Bushra, I got a picture that this is the kind of person you need on your team if your family has any chance of getting out. Bushra is a lawyer. She speaks perfect English. She works for a global ngo, Oxfam. She's used to navigating bureaucracies in multiple languages. She has connections in countries all over the world. To navigate this complex process, you need someone who can make things happen. You need a bushra or a Yusuf, apparently. You also need to know someone who's in a band.

So that was the first hurdles, and then it was a hurdle to. To write the story, because every time you wrote the story, it has to be verified by GoFundMe, and then they would allow it or not, so they weren't allowing it. Me mentioning that I lived in Palestine. So we had to change the story, but we didn't want to lie. You know what I mean? Like, so we had to then change the story. Say that I kind of live between Europe and Palestine and kind of travel for work. I do travel a lot. It had to be. We had to write the story in terms of. She was fundraising on behalf of me that lived in Europe, who was going to help my family in Gaza.

The GoFundme worked, but it wasn't enough. They raised $20,000. They needed 30 for the hala fees. Bushra and her husband were already sending money constantly into Gaza. Money to pay for $200 bags of flour for transportation. Every time the family had to move five times. Bushra knew if the family made it to Cairo, they wouldn't be allowed to work, so they'd need help paying for housing and food there too. So actually Boucher realized they needed $50,000.

So we took a loan out of, then put our savings, 20k.

Okay.

Yeah, all my, all our life savings.

How did you guys make that decision? Or was that an obvious choice?

That also was what delayed the process is like, we're currently like, we bought a house a year ago, we're like finishing it. So, I mean, it's just been, it's been a huge financial strain.

I talked to people in Gaza who sold the cars they were living in to pay for these fees. I heard about families that sold their furniture, took out loans, families who hit up aunts and cousins and extended family across multiple countries until every family member's savings was drained. And once you did that, had the money in hand, it wasn't over.

The move for us that was really complicated was finding, was figuring out a way how to get the money in, because you have to pay cash in dollars in Egypt and in order for you to, you can't send the money by bank transfer to an egyptian account. It has to be like somebody in Egypt that has a USD account and.

Wait, wait, wait, what? So you have to have, you have to have, you can't transfer money to an account?

No, it's like $40,000 to Egypt.

And you couldn't figure out literally just how to get the cash there?

How do we get the 40,040k in? Well, the thing is, is that I, I could have flown out and taken it, but then we found out that, um, it has to be a first degree relative that registers. Do you see what I mean? They have to register the family. It has to be. And I'm not first degree, I'm just like the in law. I'm like this, the, the, you know, the daughter in law. So I could, I couldn't. And then my husband, palestinian men under 40 years old, can't enter Egypt unless you have a specific. You have to have like a permit from the egyptian authorities and secret services and they do all the security checks. So that was also not an option for my husband to go, oh, my God. So it had to be his sister in Sweden.

That went to register that.

Yeah. So we flew her out and her, her daughters and her husband to. Because she has like two small, very small kids. So we flew them all out and they're like, his situation is not amazing in Sweden. They couldn't afford, like $2,500 for the plane tickets, so we paid for those two. God. Now I'm talking about when I'm, like, counting all of this. I'm just, I can't believe.

Once the sister arrived in Cairo, Bushra then had to figure out, how do I get her the cash so she can go in person to register the family at the Halle office. Bushra had a friend in Egypt.

He could receive about 20,000 in his account. So I was like, okay, I'll transfer 20,000 to him. And then we sent. And there was a person, I'm not exactly sure. And again, I'm not asking questions, but he was like, I don't want to say an agent, but he was like a person that was going to Egypt, a businessman going to Egypt that was taking money for people. Dollars to Egypt for people. So he carried 15,000 for us.

No way.

Yeah. Basically, we paid him $1,500 to take $15,000 with him and just to be.

Like, the mule, just to carry it, basically.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was risky. That was a risky move.

And did you get the sense that that person is doing that, like, all the time?

Yeah, but I don't think it was for necessarily evacuating people from Gaza. It's just, he's a businessman. He has, like, businesses in, in Cairo. So he was able to carry, I don't know. I don't know what he does. But he's like an entrepreneur. I have no details that I didn't part. Like, I, you know, I didn't ask. I was like, cool, we got somebody. My husband didn't really ask. He knew the guy. He knew the guy from a guy. So, like, he was like, okay, cool. He didn't ask questions.

Okay. So your sister in law arrives in Cairo. She goes to meet your friend who's holding $20,000 for you and the businessman who has personally delivered, for quite a high fee, another $15,000.

Yeah.

And all of that. Then she collects that, like, driving around Cairo, this, those, like, piles of cash.

Literally? Well, yeah, yeah, I guess. I mean, is it piles of cash? It's like 300 $5000 notes. So it's not.

That's a lot of cash. I mean, it's not a pretty pilot.

But, yeah, it's okay.

You can't put it in a wallet.

No, you can't put it in a wallet. That's a good question. I should ask how she carried it. But they know, so they got an.

Apartment right next to the company, the challah company. The sister in law stood in line, paid the money, and then they waited for the names of Bushra's in laws to show up on the list. Boucher and her family were stuck checking the same strange telegram channel. Youssef was the one with the screen screenshots of this life or death list. The wait was excruciating. Ushra didn't want to think or talk about it. Her sister in law wanted to talk about it all the time. They were all watching the news and the list. On April 14, their names appeared on the list. The family left the next day.

I mean, definitely when their names came out on the list, it was like a physical. There was something physical that changed in me.

What did it feel like? What changed?

This was like. It's like, okay, they're gonna survive. You know? They're gonna live.

Yeah.

And there's no word for it in English, but maybe you can look it up in Arabic. It's called Qahir. It's like. It's like a mix of anger and disgust. It's the word. That's what it means. It's like a mix of anger, disgusting and despair.

And you felt toward. What made you feel like, which part?

I mean, listen, I have never. I had never met my in laws.

Never met her in laws, because israeli restrictions make it very hard to travel between the West bank and Gaza.

Like, how is it that this has to happen for Astami and for my son, to me, his grandparents, for the first time? You know, like, how. Why. Why do we have to go through this?

What is it going to mean to your family to have spent this money on this? Like, long term or shame, shame, shame. Why?

Because they're shamed. Because that's not who we are. You know, like, we've been rendered destitute. You know, like, they're not destitute people. You know, like, they had a beautiful home and beautiful lives, and. And to put that on your son. I mean, I don't know. I don't know if it's shame, but it's like guilt, maybe. It's like they're so grateful that they're ashamed to say it. You know what I mean? It's embarrassing that they put that on us, and so we don't talk about it. It's not like there's a thank you, because even a thank you is, like, not enough for them, and so it's better not to say it.

Do you want to talk about it?

No, because I would do it a million times over again. And they know that. I just need to know that they're alive and that they're good. And now, you know, I mean, the thing is, is that they're in Egypt now and I'm in Egypt now. But the road ahead is so hard in, like, coming here and, like, just seeing them, like, they're not the same people. They never will be the same people, you know?

This brings us back to Yusuf Youssef, who knew this. He knew leaving Gaza meant he would not be the same person. And still Yousuf was going through all these steps through a system designed to frustrate, deter and bankrupt him. Youssef's version of this process, raising an astounding amount of money, getting the cash in dollars physically to the challah office. Yousuf's maneuvers were not the exact same as Bushra's, but they were just as involved and absurd right up until he was registered and waiting for permission mission to do something he did not want to do when he was growing up, Yusuf's uncle used to tell him he reminded him of his grandfather. He grew up hearing this a lot. The similarities to his grandfather and Yusuf got it. His grandfather hustled, made things happen. He was resourceful. But Yusuf has been thinking about this lately, what it meant to be like his grandfather, what else it meant? His grandfather is the one who got everyone to Jibalia, to the refugee camp in the north of Gaza, when they were all pushed out of their homes in what is now Israel in 1948. His grandfather is the one who made sure everyone got set up in the same place next to each other, made sure they survived, had housing, had their needs met.

He made sure they were safe and they were together and they were. Jabelle camp became a small city. People moved to bigger apartments nearby, had kids, but the family stayed safe and right next to each other. 75 years later, Youssef was the one who moved his sisters and their families to a tent camp in Rafa so they could all be nearby, safe and together. They were there for three months when Yusuf heard from a contact in Egypt, a friend with connections at the hala company, who told him that his family's names were likely to be listed in the next week. He wasn't just failing at keeping the family together. He was the one who was going to split them up. Youssef, are you packing?

I don't have anything to pack. That's the easiest thing to.

That's the easiest part.

I have two jeans, pants, two t shirts, one jack, two jackets, and I actually, most of it. I will leave it for my brothers in law. I'm just gonna take just what I could wear during the wear the first day, just a pajama for the next day, and that's it. The easiest part is packing.

What's the hardest part?

It's also backing tangibly, there is nothing to be backed during the journey, but we are backing our relations with our families. Now. I don't know how it's gonna be that day when we are just going out and I don't want to really think about that moment because I don't know how it's gonna be. And yeah, yeah, it's gonna be difficult. I don't want to think about it. Let's wait and see.

Hi, Youssef.

Hello, Hannah.

Hi. Hi. How's your day been?

I don't know. It was bit long. And end up with our name listed by the Egyptians to cross tomorrow to leave to Egypt.

Wow.

And I wasn't expecting that soon. But looking to my sisters today, I received the news when I was with my sisters, it was really difficult how to be with it.

You were with your sisters when you.

Found out the name were list, because they list the names usually after 10:00 p.m. the night. So we were there having iftar with Aseel and the other rest of my sisters, Hebrew and Hadeel. I have a friend who lives in Egypt, and he has some access with Hela company, which is the company that we register through it to cross to Egypt. And he told me that my name is not listed. It's not going to be listed today, so I don't need to wait for the list. It's going to be listed for tomorrow. So I decided we were having iftar with my sisters. I told them that we are leaving the day after. And I just, I wanted to use that day with them. We agreed to have iftar together, all of us. And we were planning for tomorrow that I even. I don't want to work, go to work. I will spend it with my sisters. I take my family there. We spend the entire day there. Then we go back to prepare ourselves to travel. And suddenly when we were there, one of the wife of one of our colleagues who lives with us, she called and she said, your names are listed.

And it was very shocking. And it became, suddenly everything became a chaos. Everyone started crying. And it was very emotional moment that I didn't want to see. My daughter Ilya was crying because her aunts are crying, my wife is crying, my mother is crying. And then I found myself in this chaotic situation, trying to understand if it's the right option or not, if it's.

You were having doubts, you know?

Yeah, of course. I am going from nowhere, leaving behind me everything, an entire life. And this is the second time I'm leaving things behind. I left my house in the north, toward the south. I left my. My house, my memories, living in the north. Now I can. I'm trying to understand or to imagine how my sisters are feeling when they are losing their backup, their supporter, whenever they want anything, whenever they are facing anything, they know that Yusuf is there.

What did they say? Youssef, what did they say to you?

Everyone was in a shock, including me. Everyone was crying. And when I was looking to my sisters, I felt how weak I am to make that decision. I don't have that enough courage to leave everything behind. And this is one of the hardest moments in my life.

Yeah.

When I was looking for my sisters, when they are thinking about losing their entire family. It's not only me. It's my. My wife, my children, their mother. I couldn't find the right word. What should I say? And the issue is that I was very overwhelmed emotionally. And if I said. And it happened when I started to talk to them, I was trying to show how strong I am. And I was like, it's fine, you. Since a month I informed you to be prepared for this moment than here, where I lost control of my emotions. Usually I'm that tough man who cannot be seen as a weak person. And I understood how weak I am. And I don't want to be shown weak in front of them, but it's out of my head. My sisters, I think they. I believe they know. They know that I will do anything for them. And whenever they need anything. I already prepared everything.

Youssef, you told me over the last month that every time I asked how you feel about leaving, you were sort of like, I can't. I don't know. I'll know when it happens. I don't know. I can't think about it. Do you feel like you're suddenly thinking about it now?

It's. I was postponing.

Yeah.

Thinking about it, because I understood how hard it is. And I was doing right. I was doing right today when I received the news and I'm knowing that I'm leaving tomorrow. I never felt the pain inside me like, today. And I was right. I was right. And now it's real. It's happening. And I'm leaving Gaza towards, like, losing my identity.

When are you leaving?

I'm leaving 07:00 a.m. in the morning.

Oh, wow. You're leaving in 6 hours?

Yeah, I am leaving.

Are you gonna sleep?

I don't know if I could manage to sleep because tomorrow morning at 07:00 a.m. i have to go to meet my sisters again before we leave. And I want to make sure, even if I have one more minute to spend it with them, I'll do it. I don't know, Hannah. I'm going through one of the most difficult. It's not one of the most. It's the most difficult decision I made in my entire life.

I know.

Now I'm just leaving everything now. I am leaving and I will be refugee once again. Born as a refugee, raised as a refugee, and now starting a new life as a refugee.

Youssef, I want to let you go have time with your family and also hopefully sleep some before you have to make that trip tomorrow.

Thanks. Thank you, Hannah. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. I think our next call will be from a different place. Yeah, hopefully it will go. Okay.

Alright. Bye, Youssef.

Bye bye. Bye bye.

Yusuf left through the rafa crossing the next day. That day, his family saw the world outside Gaza for the first time. The kids were amazed by the electricity in Cairo and the trees. Trees in Gaza have been cut down now to use for fire. When Ilya and Ahmed started to tell their cousins in Gaza about the watermelon they were eating and the playground they played on, Yusuf had to tell them to keep that kind of thing to themselves from now on. Manal took the children to the market and bought chocolate. Yusuf sat at the computer, continuing to try to make plans for his sisters, trying to figure out where were the israeli tanks now? What might their approach into Rafa be? What was the intensity of the bombing that day, and what did it mean? Were the Ngo's leaving Rafa yet? Were other people leaving? Was it time for his sisters to move somewhere else in Gaza? Then, on May 6, the israeli military sent tanks into Rafa. The invasion had finally started. That same day, there was news that Hamas had agreed to a ceasefire. It was very confusing, but for a couple hours, it seemed like maybe there was going to be a ceasefire.

I was very, very excited and hyped. And it's like, what do you do? It's like, okay. You know, they start to think about what, Nick? What I'm going to do with the family. Like, I should go back to Gaza. And now I need. I start even to look the process to go back to Gaza as soon as I can and what really might.

Take one, two weeks.

Yeah, I'm using, sir, what I'm doing here, watching the news, writing reports. I want to. I want to be there. The only option for me is to.

Go back to Gaza.

And even with my sisters, I can just drop them in the car and we keep running in Gaza from a place to the other. I don't mind it.

Youssef was suddenly back to the person I remember talking to for every other move before this last one. Energized, frantic.

I start to think rationally about what I'm gonna happen, what. What I'm gonna do. And I will. The plan that I'm having now is to get it out, away, how to come back.

But that day there was no ceasefire. And the next day, the israeli military seized the Rafa crossing into Egypt and closed the border. There was no way back. Yusuf would be in one world, his sisters would be back home in another.

Hannah Jaffee Walt is one of the bruises of our show. Hannah's story about Youssef was edited by Laura Starcheski and Nancy Updike. Our episode today was produced by Aviva de Kornfeld. The people who put together today's episode include Jendia Bond, Zoe Chase, Michael Kamate, Emmanuel Jocelyn, Catherine Raymondo, Nadia Raymond, Safiya Riddle, Ryan Rumery, Frances Swanson, Christopher Chatala, Matt Tierney, Julie Whitaker and Diane Wu are our managing editor, Sara Abdurrahman. Our senior editor is David Kestenbaum. Our executive editor is Emmanuel Berry. Reporting research in arabic translation from Hani Helwasli Arabic interpreting from Ms. Ghal and Sausen Abdelatif Arabic voiceover by Liam Lubani additional reporting by Fatma and by Dana Balut. Special thanks to all the reporters at Mahta Masr and the organized crime, corruption and reporting project. Thanks also to Shane Ology, Miriam Marmor, Tara Abood, Adam Bakri, and Rania Mustafa. Casting out from Sabrina Hyman our website if you're going on a long drive, going on a vacation, looking for something to listen to. Over 800 episodes of our program streaming for absolutely free thisamericanlife.org dot this american life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio exchange. Thanks as always to our program's co founder, Mister Troy Malatia.

You know, he keeps getting pulled into these spats on x, especially with this one guy, Tori couldn't remember his name. Elon Something.

I don't know what he does, but he's like an entrepreneur.

I'm Eric Glass. Back next week with more stories of this american life.