In The Atavist, Rhana Natour details one Gaza teen’s recovery from war

In a 2024 piece for The Atavist Magazine, independent journalist Rhana Natour tells the story of one teenager from Gaza: 14-year-old Layan Albaz, who lost both of her legs in an Israeli airstrike and later traveled to the United States for medical treatment. That story, which details Layan’s complex recovery in the U.S. while she continues to grapple with the horrors of war happening back at home, won a National Magazine Award from the American Society of Magazine Editors earlier this month. 

Rhana spoke with SLR podcast host and fellow journalist Amanda Ulrich about her reporting process for the award-winning article, the experience of interviewing a teenager who’s been through intense trauma, and the importance of telling in-depth, complete stories about Gaza’s surviving citizens.

The following highlights, taken from that conversation, have been edited for brevity and clarity. 

Listen to the full podcast episode on Spotify or Apple podcasts.

Amanda Ulrich: You just won a National Magazine Award in the profile writing category, along with The Atavist Magazine, which is super exciting. What was your reaction when it happened?

Rhana Natour: I was so happy and so grateful. I didn’t even know that The Atavist put us up for this award. The fact that they felt this piece was worthy of all the pieces they did was just so touching. It was not on my bingo card for 2025 at all. So when I heard that I was a finalist and saw all the pieces that were in the company of profile writing — they were all such excellent pieces — I just really couldn’t believe it. I’m mostly known as a video producer, a documentarian, a TV journalist, and so writing is something that came later for me. But it was the best medium for this story. So it was really, really special. And, you know, I’m glad that Layan’s story really went beyond the politics of this and and really touched people as a story, as a narrative piece, and that people were impacted by what happened to her and who she was as a person. And that makes me really happy for her as well.

Before [Layan] got to the States for medical treatment in the first place, can you talk about how she lost her legs, what that airstrike looked like, and how she went through all of that back in Gaza?

The way she described it was shocking because she remembers a lot — [although] there are huge, vast points in her memory that she doesn’t [remember] and, you know, who knows if those are real memories or filled in by some sort of dreamscape. But she was in her sister’s family home, it was a multi-story home, an apartment building. An airstrike hit the apartment building — and she remembers the moment it hit. She remembers a wall, like a cement block, coming down and basically separating her from her sister and her [sister’s] child in that moment, and a lot of people were killed, including two of her sisters, a niece and a nephew. The nephew was just a few days old. Layan had been spending time at her sister’s house, which they thought was safe. She was spending time there because her sister had just had a baby, and Layan had visited her in the hospital and they had just come home with the baby.

In the beginning of your story, you describe Layan arriving in the States and to her new host family, and write that her anger and frustration and annoyance about everything that’s happened to her is coming through more so than sadness, at least initially. Do you think that people want or expect victims of violence or warfare to act in a certain way, to act helpless or sad or like a victim, and that when they act angry at the world that’s something that people don’t expect?

I think when people sit and think about it, of course it makes sense that they’re angry. She was just a kid living her life, and this war didn’t have anything to do with her, and now she has to grapple with what life looks like. And she lost her home, she lost her school, she lost relatives, she lost her best friend. And of course it makes sense, but somehow, when we’re facing it, it’s surprising and shocking, and you still have the normal reaction that any human would have when you’re facing an angry person who’s saying mean things. You know, you’re a human being. And even though this person has faced trauma, after a while people will react, and they’ll have that same reaction. So it’s hard because that anger is a natural consequence, but it also gets in the way of their healing. It gets in the way of their ability to map out a future. That’s the tragedy of it all.

At the end of your story, you write that there are a couple different things that could happen with Layan [after treatment]. She doesn’t necessarily want to go back to Gaza [and be trapped], but some people thought maybe she’d have to go to Egypt to stay with a relative, etc. Do you know what has happened with her now? Do you have an update on that?

Layan is still in the U.S., she’s still staying with the host family in Chicago that I profiled in that piece. She’s going to school with her host sisters, so to speak, and she’s walking on prosthetics, and I think that’s made a big difference in her confidence, because she can appear like everyone else.

A couple of months ago, I saw a video where Layan was the first one to welcome another pediatric amputee who was arriving in Chicago. And she walked up to him with her prosthetic legs and she gave him a hug, and she gave his sister and his mom a hug. She kind of gave him the grace that she might have wanted to receive when she arrived. And she really used herself as an example of: “I know you’re in a wheelchair now, I know that this is really hard now, but look at me. I’ve been through this journey. I’m still on this journey, but you can do it. And I’m an example.” And I think that shows a lot of growth in Layan.

Compiled by Amanda Ulrich. Photo courtesy of Jaber Jehad Badwan/Creative Commons via Wikimedia.