Ten-year-old Rateb Abu Qleiq sat in a rusted chair in front of his tent in Deir al-Balah. As he spoke, he unconsciously swung his right leg, which was amputated just below the knee, back and forth—the stub tracing a short arc in the air. On his lap he cradled a makeshift prosthetic, nothing more than a piece of plastic sewage pipe outfitted with an orange covering secured by a piece of string.
“My leg is gone,” Rateb told Drop Site. “This pipe doesn’t make up for my leg.”
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Rateb was severely wounded in an Israeli airstrike in Khan Younis earlier this year that killed his mother and brother. His right leg was crushed and had to be amputated. He has undergone five surgeries in his abdomen since the attack.
“I felt sad that I’m no longer like the other kids because my leg was amputated. I don’t know how to play with them. I wish I had a leg so I could play with my friends,” he said.
Desperate to move again, Rateb and his cousin fashioned the prosthetic leg out of a plastic sewage pipe he found in the street. “I don’t want to give up, and my determination is strong. I dream of having a real prosthetic limb,” Rateb said. “If my leg hadn’t been cut off, the first place I’d go is the field to play football. I want to return to our home and have my mom, my dad, and my leg with me.”
“When he first wore it, he was so happy, as if it were his real leg, he would walk on it. But poor thing, because it was made of plastic, it started to hurt his leg. No matter what, it’s still just a sewage pipe,” Rateb’s uncle, Mohammed Abu Qleiq, told Drop Site. “It doesn’t replace a real prosthetic limb, and it doesn’t make up for his leg. But this was the simplest thing we had.”