Mahmoud searches the rubble for remains of his wife and children

Amid the ruins of a house that no longer resembles a home, the young Palestinian Mahmoud Hammad sits holding a rudimentary sieve, passing soil through it stone by stone in a last-ditch attempt to find the remains of his wife and children, who were swallowed by the bombardment during the genocidal war on the Gaza Strip.

Nothing remains of the six-story building except scattered debris, and nothing remains of the family except names etched in memory, after Israeli bombardment erased everything. In this harsh humanitarian scene, the tools of daily life are transformed into a means of farewell, encapsulating the tragedy of a single family and reflecting the image of an entire city exhausted by war and siege.

Hammad documented the painful moments of his search in a video posted on his Facebook page, in which he appears sifting through the rubble with a simple sieve, searching for whatever remains of his family members.

He wrote alongside the video, “I have finally reached the remains of my wife, and with this primitive method I am gathering them along with her unborn child, and God willing I will reach what remains of my sons and daughters.”