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Film charts rehabilitation of girl blinded in Gaza

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Summary of story from Al Jazeera, May 12, 2001

In March 2003, 12-year-old Hoda Darwish was sitting at her desk in a UN elementary school in Khan Younis on the Gaza Strip when a high velocity bullet was fired through her classroom window.

It hit Hoda in the head. The doctors at the hospital said that she would never awaken from her coma.

But after two weeks she started to recover. When she woke up she slowly discovered that her life would never be the same again – she had lost her sight.

“I felt lots of pain in my head. I asked about the light, I said ‘Where’s the daylight?’

“I told my mum I couldn’t see. She said that the lights had gone out … That they had gone out in the whole world – that it wasn’t just me in the dark.

“But later, they had to tell me that I wouldn’t see again. That was very difficult,” she says.

This poignant film by Johan Eriksson looks at Hoda’s gradual mental and physical rehabilitation at the Rehabilitation Centre in Gaza, as she copes with the daily pain and suffering of her injury and how she rebuilds her confidence, all in a place full of fear and tragedy.

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