In a small office space in Gaza City, a child stands still, wearing a virtual reality headset.
A therapist asks seven-year-old Razan what she can see. She names objects as they appear in front of her: a train, toys, animals, the sea.
The prompts are gentle: reach for the cube, use the hand you can, tell me what you are feeling. It is therapy, but it looks like play.
Razan was injured last year when she went outside to get water for her family. A shell landed nearby, the shrapnel careering into her leg.
A series of surgeries followed, including one reconstruction attempt that failed. The injury is still impossible to miss – Razan’s leg is misshapen where a chunk of her flesh and muscle has gone.
Doctors told the family there was little more they could do for her inside Gaza, where medical facilities have been so badly affected by two years of war.
Only by leaving the Strip and seeking treatment abroad was there hope of a proper recovery, they said. For a young child, the news felt like a second attack.
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Her mother, Rana Abu Harbid, says the trauma was so severe that Razan stopped eating for days, surviving only on water before collapsing and being taken back to hospital. Nightmares still wake her.
Now, after months of support from this team, Razan’s mental health is improving. But it is slow progress, with no guarantees.
“She slowly began to improve, and she started to forget, little by little,” says Rana. “But the nightmares still come back, and she wakes terrified, shaking, feeling like the ground is moving.”
During the sessions, a group of children sit in a circle and are given headsets to wear along with hand-operated controllers.
Virtual reality allows them to feel like they are entering new places, without moving out of the chair.
Suddenly, from Gaza’s grey world of rubble, dust and destruction, a child can find themselves watching animals roam, fish swim, or cartoon characters cavort happily.
In the same office, two brothers, Ahmad and Amjad, 17 and 13, talk about what the VR sessions give them.
Ahmad says that when the pressure of the war closes in on him, the headset helps him feel able to breathe again. Amjad says it takes him from war and destruction into a world of nature.
Theirs, too, is a story of lives that were ripped apart in a moment when an Israeli airstrike hit their home. Ahmad says he was thrown into the air “like a piece of paper”.
Shrapnel hit him, some going into his face. He’s now blind in one of his eyes.
He says he thought he was going to die because his twin brother had been killed earlier that year, and death felt close.
Amjad’s injuries were even more severe. He was taken straight into surgery.
Later, he was wrapped in a blanket and taken toward the hospital mortuary, assumed to be dead, until he was able to move his hand to show he was alive.
Their mother, Nissma, describes waking up to dust and rubble. The place where the boys had been sleeping was buried under stones.
She found Ahmad covered in blood and realised his eye was gone. She then went looking for Amjad, believing he was trapped beneath the debris.
Months later, both boys are still being treated. Shrapnel remains in their bodies.
Amjad says there is nothing more doctors in Gaza can do for some of his injuries and that he needs to travel outside the Strip for surgery.
For many families here, that possibility feels distant.
Only a very small number of people are allowed to leave Gaza to seek medical treatment each day, and thousands upon thousands want that opportunity.
The VR sessions are part of a project run by TechMed Gaza.
A staff member, Lama Abu Dalal, explains that the idea began after a child injured in the war showed severe psychological symptoms, refusing to eat or drink, avoiding people, crying constantly.
VR was tried as a way to reduce those symptoms, with positive results.
Since then, the project has worked with around 180 cases, using structured sessions inside the headset, breathing exercises, walking exercises, and natural environments.
Lama says they have seen children who could not walk because of fear take their first steps while wearing the headset, showing that the barrier was psychological, not physical.
The work is limited by what they have. There are only a few headsets. When one breaks, there are no replacement parts.
With crossings closed, no new equipment comes in. Fewer headsets means fewer children can be seen.
All of this is happening against a backdrop of ongoing instability. A ceasefire announced late last year is still officially in place, but it is fragile.
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Strikes have continued. People are still being killed. Life in the camps remains precarious.
In the office, Razan takes off the headset. The forest and the sea disappear. Outside, the camp is still there.
For a few minutes, the children here are somewhere else.
Then they step back into Gaza as it is.
