Huda Abu Jazar hugs her phone to connect with her son Ihab Ihab Abu Jazar leads a national team carrying the weight of all hopes

Inside a dust-worn tent, under a fabric barely shielding from December’s cold, Huda Abu Jazar sat holding her small phone as if she were embracing her entire heart. On the screen appeared her son Ihab’s face… the captain, the coach, the son who still looked like a child in his mother’s eyes, no matter how big his name grew on the fields.

Although distance and war separated them, and rubble surrounded the mother on all sides, her smile rose above the destruction, and her joy extended beyond the tent. In that moment, there was no displacement, no fear, no loss… only a mother’s heart beating with pride, and a son’s voice carrying the homeland on his shoulders.

A Game Carrying Pain

Ihab, leading a wounded team, drags the grief of an entire people behind him, drawing strength from a mother standing in the front lines of resilience. He is on the field, she is in the tent, yet they share the same line of faith and hope. Every pass in the match is a prayer, and every starting whistle is a new promise of life.

A Mother Bearing a Message of Pride She wanted to be warmth for her son ahead of the match between Syria and Palestine in the group stage of the 2025 Arab Cup organized by FIFA in Qatar. Her strength was as strong as Gaza itself.

She does not see him merely as the coach of the Palestinian national team; she sees him as an extension of a resilient homeland. She watches him with eyes watering from fear and shining with pride, whispering in secret: “Raise the name of Palestine as you have lifted my head with you.” Each time his image flashes on the phone screen, she feels the tent expand, and Gaza, despite its wounds, is still able to smile.

Thus, amid pain, joy is born shyly but sincerely. And amid sorrow, pride rises high without asking permission. A displaced mother, a son on the front lines of sport, and between them, an entire homeland breathing through a video call, turning tears into hope, loss into meaning, and rubble into an unending story of resilience.