--:-- Aisha Roscoe: I'm Aisha Roscoe, and you're listening to The Sunday Story from Up First, where we go beyond the news to bring you one big story.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: If you've been listening to NPR's reporting on Gaza over the past year and a half, there's a name you've likely heard. NPR's producer in Gaza, Anas Baba. With Anas Baba in Khan Yunus, Gaza.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: That was NPR producer Anas Baba. Anas Baba.
--:-- Anas Baba: Anas is one of the only Palestinian journalists in Gaza working full-time for an American news organization. He's from Gaza City, and he's been NPR's eyes and ears on the ground. He sends dispatches from hospitals, displacement camps, and bomb sites.
--:-- [Sound effects: Dust and explosions]
--:-- Anas Baba: Dust everywhere. The powder of the guns and explosions all over the air. Wherever you put your eye to the horizon, it's the same. Destruction everywhere.
--:-- Anas Baba: Anas does all of this with little more than a cell phone. He works closely with a team of NPR journalists who've been covering this war from outside of Gaza.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Israel has banned international journalists from independent access to Gaza since Hamas' deadly attack on October 7, 2023.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: On January 19 of this year, a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas went into effect. The ceasefire permitted Palestinians to return to the north of Gaza. And today, we are returning. Hundreds of thousands of people. Literally hundreds of thousands of people.
--:-- Anas Baba: Anas Babo was one of them. Nothing. Still the same. Gonna keep reporting here.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Justine Yan is a producer for The Sunday Story. She's been keeping in touch with Anas since he returned to Gaza City in late January to try and understand what it's like to be a reporter covering the war while also living through it.
--:-- Justine Yan: Stay with us.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: This message comes from BetterHelp. It's only human to ask others for advice, like turning to your barista, hairdresser, or a taxi driver for life advice. But when you're looking for help about relationships, anxiety, depression, or other clinical issues, they may not have all the right answers. Instead, get guidance from a licensed therapist online with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash NPR for 10% off your first month.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: This message comes from Doctors Without Borders. People are living through a moment defined by unrelenting crises and need. Civilians are caught in the crossfire of violence and war. Malnutrition threatens the lives of children. Communities depend on life-saving humanitarian aid. Doctors Without Borders is meeting this moment of overwhelming need with action. But they can't do it alone. Help provide life-saving care around the world. Learn how to donate today at doctorswithoutborders.org slash NPR.
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--:-- Aisha Roscoe: I started calling Anas Baba after the ceasefire went into effect. And he was home in Gaza City. The only place he could find with a good internet connection was a cemetery next to a hospital that had generators. So that's where he'd sit to talk with me about what he'd been through during this war and how home had been an idea that sustained him for 15 months.
--:-- [Sound effects: Anas Baba's voice]
--:-- Anas Baba: I was always fantasizing how it's going to be the first moment that I'm going to see my old neighborhood.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: He said he wasn't sure what he'd find. But as he walked down the street, reality sunk in.
--:-- [Sound effects: Destruction]
--:-- Anas Baba: The mosque of my neighborhood, it was totally flat into the ground. He walked past a community kitchen. And it was flat into the ground. And another building that had housed 20 families. It was flattened to the ground.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: I kept walking and trying to tell myself that my house is okay. I do believe that my house is going to be okay. And in a way, it was. Unlike so many other houses, his was still standing.
--:-- [Sound effects: Anas Baba's voice]
--:-- Anas Baba: Anas' house is at the end of a small street. It's four stories high, with concrete verandas on the top three floors. He said his father designed it to look like an Italian villa.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Anas lived here with his mother and father, his sister, and two of his younger brothers. They all evacuated Gaza early in the war, and he hasn't seen them in almost a year.
--:-- [Sound effects: Anas Baba's voice]
--:-- Anas Baba: So when he walked up to the front door of his house, he was alone. He reached for the keys in his pocket, but there was nothing left to unlock. The doors were exploded.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: I found shutters of the locus itself. So the dream of unlocking my door was taken, so I just kept the keys inside my pocket and I entered the house.
--:-- [Sound effects: Anas Baba's voice]
--:-- Anas Baba: Once I entered, I started to feel the beating of my heart going crazy. All of the windows had been shattered by bombs. There were gaping holes in the walls. And on the third floor, he found an unexploded artillery shell.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Ana surveyed the damage, the broken glass and piles of rubble. The kitchen was totally empty. No cooking gas, no blades, and no mugs, no spoons, nothing.
--:-- [Sound effects: Anas Baba's voice]
--:-- Anas Baba: My house was super sad. There was no people here in order to spread life.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: I tried my best to stay strong, but having that rush of emotions was good for me. It really was good for me because I thought that I lost that sensation.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Anas is used to being in reporter mode. I'm on the on, on, on, on, on, go, go, go, go mood. Yes. I cannot even stop for a second. If I stop, that means that I'm going to find that ghost inside of me.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: That's Aya Batrawi, NPR's correspondent in Dubai. She's been working closely with Anas since the start of the war.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: I still think he's in a little bit of a fight-or-flight mode, like, because he hasn't really settled in yet.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Eya has covered the Middle East for more than 15 years. After Hamas' attack on October 7th, her editors in Washington called her and asked her to fly to Israel to join the NPR team there.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: From day one, I was told, call Gaza. From then on, Eya was on the phone with Anas almost every day. trying to figure out how we tell the story together and, like, what the story should be.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: It was a very intense, very intense time. In the chaos of that first week, Anas and Eya collaborated on several stories.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: Anas would upload recordings and videos he'd gathered on the ground, and I would write the stories for the radio, including this one.
--:-- [Sound effects: Hospital sounds]
--:-- Aya Batrawi: This is the sound of Gaza's biggest hospital, Al-Shifa. All of its beds are full, like all of Gaza's hospitals, clinics, and medical centers, serving its population of 2 million.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Every functioning hospital is at full capacity The stream of wounded and dead
--:-- Aya Batrawi: So he was there interviewing staff documenting some of the cases coming in just getting us information of what it was like on the ground.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: This was some of the last reporting Eya got from Anas in Gaza City, before he had to evacuate.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: I remember having this call with him and he was like, OK, this is the situation. They're telling us to evacuate to the south, all of Gaza City.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Israel rained down paper leaflets across parts of Gaza's north telling residents to leave their homes.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: I went on the radio again and again, trying to describe what was happening.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Berzea Betraoui is in Jerusalem. EO, thanks for being with us.
--:-- Berzea Betraoui: Hi, thanks, Scott. What do you hear from people inside of Gaza?
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: I've been talking to them all week. It's been sheer terror and trauma.
--:-- Berzea Betraoui: They tell me the sounds of the bombs this time are different. And even Israel has said that this war is different and that the response will be harder and harsher than Hamas has ever seen.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: I can hear in my voice, like my voice, like quivering and going away because it had been such an intense week.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Already had been like seven days of nonstop reporting and calls.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: And yeah, like I can hear in my voice already like a sense of exhaustion.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: I spoke with our producer in Gaza, Anas Baba, who also had to leave with his family.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: He told me scenes of mothers carrying their babies and walking by foot for miles, fathers walking with kids on their back, young children having to walk for miles and miles, all of them trying to head south.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Anas documented every step of that journey.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: I'm standing at the moment inside of Nasser Medical Complex in Khanun City. Sending dispatches to his colleagues in Israel.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: I'm now standing in the middle of the rebels of what was before a peaceful neighborhood in Rafah City.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: But sometimes, Eya didn't hear from Anas for days.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Was the phone line down because they've run out of fuel to keep their telecoms operating? Or something was struck.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: He had to use an e-SIM, or was there like 3G or 4G available?
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: There were multiple communications blackouts during the war.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: There is nothing like being disconnected. It's a feeling that you don't know anything. You are not able to understand what happens around you.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Just as Eya depended on Anas' reporting, Anas depended on Eya to help him see the bigger picture.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: So that meant, sometimes, Anas took big risks, like moving closer to the Israeli border to connect to their cell towers.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: I just put myself in danger in order just to get some internet near to the borders.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: I can't stay there much more.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Eya and the rest of the team worried about Anas' safety.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: When there were bombings in an area Anas was thought to be in, someone would reach out just to ask, Are you okay? Is it near you?
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: And Anas would respond as soon as he could. He was alive, and he had recordings for them.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: Most mornings, Anas told me, he woke up at 4 a.m. and began scrolling through updates.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: What had happened while he was asleep? The problem, it was at least 90 airstrikes every day.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: So what am I going to cover? Am I going to cover the airstrike on the school or the airstrike on the mosque or the airstrike that's on the hospital or the airstrike that killed 100 persons or is going to be the children that were amputated?
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: One thing he always did was try to name the victims.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: This is the sound of a mother that mourned his 10-year-old child. She already lost a daughter before, and now she lost another son. It's too much.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: I wish that I do have a hundred clones of me that can be everywhere. To just document every single thing.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: But it was impossible.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: It all felt impossible for Ea Batrawi, too.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: After a few weeks in Israel, she went home to Dubai. From there, she continued to work with Anas to tell stories from Gaza.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: And that was a different sort of challenge.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: I can't remember exactly when I came across it on Instagram, but this is like a collage by this group called Gaza Poets.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: And it sort of spoke to me so much because it's how I felt.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: It just says in big black letters in the middle, Gaza is being bombed. And all these tiny little words around it saying things like, I eat breakfast while Gaza is being bombed.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: I read a book while Gaza is being bombed. I laugh at a joke while Gaza is being bombed. I go to the gym while Gaza's being bombed. I fall asleep while Gaza's being bombed.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Reporting was actually like a really important way to release some of that pressure that was building up.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: After the break, how Ea covered the war from afar, while Anas only got closer and closer.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: This message comes from NetSuite. What does the future hold for business? Can someone invent a crystal ball? Until then, over 42,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one AI cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: With real-time insights and forecasting, you're able to peer into the future and seize new opportunities. Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at netsuite.com slash story.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: This message comes from Lisa. Lisa mattresses are meticulously designed and assembled in the USA for exceptional quality. And each mattress is designed with specific sleep positions and feel preferences in mind.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Plus, they back it all up with free shipping, easy returns, and a 100-night sleep trial. Visit Lisa.com for 25% off mattresses, plus get an extra $50 off with promo code NPR. That's L-E-E-S-A dot com, promo code NPR.
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--:-- Aisha Roscoe: The clinicians at MidiHealth understand what you're experiencing and know how to help. MidiHealth provides specialized care for perimenopause and menopause, covered by insurance. Book your visit today at joinmidi.com.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: That's joinmidi.com.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: We're back with a Sunday story. I'm Justine Yan. For Dubai-based correspondent Aya Batrawi, as the war dragged on, it got harder to make sense of what was happening.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: It's war. It's war, but it's also a war that was happening so quick and so fast, and one that had the full, full backing of the United States.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: And also there are certain numbers that certainly have defied the history books, like Oxfam reports that more women and children were killed in one year of war in Gaza than in any other war in decades.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: The Committee to Protect Journalists says more journalists were killed in Gaza than any war on record. Same with health care workers, civil defense rescue workers, like the list goes on and on.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: I really had to think, how do you tell the story of Gazan. Everywhere she looked, there were images of atrocities. Men, women, children, injured and killed
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: It was live streamed every day on like every platform TikTok Instagram Facebook Telegram WhatsApp
--:-- Aya Batrawi: People saw and had access to see everything Everywhere she went everything she did she thought of Gaza
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Her own life, outside the frame of the war, felt unfair. Like, why are my kids able to just bike, stub their toe, cry for an hour and get ice cream?
--:-- Aya Batrawi: And like all these other kids are like dying these very slow, painful deaths under the rubble.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: There's such a disconnect.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: That for me was a moment where I felt like, I don't know if I can keep doing this. I don't have the luxury to tap out.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Like you have to keep going. You have to keep reporting. This is what you do. You have to keep documenting.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: It became our only way to cope with a feeling of helplessness.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Because every single aspect of this conflict has been under dispute or questioned. starting with death tolls.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: The number of dead, who died, how they died, why they died. Even just the number of aid trucks going in, you'd think that's a pretty straightforward thing to count. It's not.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Aya made phone call after phone call to doctors, rescue crews, and aid workers on the ground, trying to verify the basic facts.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: And while doing that, she'd also call on us. And a lot of times it would just be venting frustrations, just like being there for each other. as colleagues.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Reassuring each other that what they did mattered.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: And then there's also just the element of like, how are you? How are you? You know, what did you eat for breakfast? Did you get food today? Did you sleep well?
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Once I return from any documenting an airstrike, I feel that I'm still doing nothing.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: the burned blood and flesh after an air strike.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: I do wish that no one, truly no one, can smell it in his life.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: In the South, Anas was displaced again and again. He lived in his car. That's where he slept at night.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: I do suffer from insomnia. I'm not going to lie about that. I cannot sleep that much.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: He was always hungry. Anas has lost almost 70 pounds since the start of the war.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: And there were days he couldn't eat because of what he saw.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: The repetition of bombing, evacuation, and bombing again. It's a cycle and a loop, never ends.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: That just keeps going and going and going, but that takes you more and more and more and more to the same spot, Always numb, always anxious, always on your toes.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Anas has often been among the first to arrive at the scene of a bombing.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: Several times, he's tried to save someone's life.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: After one airstrike in Al-Barej, central Gaza, Anas found a group of people trying to rescue women and children trapped in a building that had just been bombed.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: It was a human chain. So he joined it.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Someone passed him a young woman. She was semi-conscious and couldn't breathe.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: He carried her out of the building. And they started to take out most of the sands and even small debris of sand and cement out of her own throat.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Once I just like make sure that it's opened, I started to give her a CPR.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: and she took the first exhale and inhale and opened her eyes.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: There's no footage of this moment, because Anas had put down his phone.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: He wasn't reporting anymore.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: It took more than 15 months for the bombs to stop. The day the ceasefire went into effect, January 19th, 2025.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: It was also Anas' birthday. He turned 31.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: About a week later, Anna set out on the coastal road towards Gaza City. It was a seven-mile walk north.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: He was surrounded by thousands of other Palestinians also heading home.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: Eya Batrawi called him. Oh my God, how do you feel?
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: It was a march and a celebration. People were waving Palestinian flags, singing, chanting, playing drums.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: Reunions were happening all along the road. People who'd stayed in the North during the war were meeting people who'd been displaced to the South.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Ana spoke to a woman who hadn't seen her son in 16 months.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: He left as a boy, she said, and now I meet him as a man.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: I'm feeling that there is like shiver all over my body, electricity that's just like gives me more energy to keep going, to keep walking.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: I'm grateful. I'm feeling that with every step that I'm just like putting here, It's me back.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: As he and the crowds got closer to Gaza City, Ea reminded him to take in the moment.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Wait, I want you to just, like, you said the sea is on your left, the Mediterranean, the coast. Can you just, like, take a big breath of, like, the fresh sea air for me?
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: When Anas finally returned to his house, it was not as he remembered it.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: He found the shattered lock, the empty kitchen, the unexploded artillery shell.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: But there were some signs of his former life, like his garden.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: I do have a lemon tree. I do have a palm tree. I do have an olive tree. And they got bigger, to be honest.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: It all gave Anas an almost irrational hope.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: I started to shout, is anybody here? Is there anyone inside the house?
--:-- Aya Batrawi: To be honest, I wanted my mother or my sister or maybe my brothers to answer me and to say, yeah, we are here, we're waiting for you.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: But no one answered me.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: And when I entered my own parent room, I felt a little bit brokenhearted that I didn't find my father and my mother just to scream on me to go out.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: You need to knock first. Did you really think that they would be there?
--:-- Aya Batrawi: Just saying after 16 months of war, we didn't have anything in our lives that we can't control except our own dreams and our own fantasies.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: And so Anas went from room to room, letting the house welcome him home.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: I laid on every single person of my family bed for around one minute.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: Even if it was dusty and super dusty but it was just like I embracing them
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Anas family is now in Europe seeking asylum
--:-- Aya Batrawi: But so far they haven't received it. They're not classified as refugees. So they're in limbo, waiting.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: I only call them once a month for 10 minutes.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: You only call them once a month?
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Yes, because I don't want them to be attached to me.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: because maybe at one day, at any moment, I'm going to be killed.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Because I told him since the start of this war that I want to stay here and I want to keep doing what I'm doing.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: In the first days of being home, Anas started settling back in.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: He wanted to fix his house. There was a lot to do.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: That leak on the roof, those windows without glass, damage to the walls.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: He went to the market and bought some materials.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: I started to buy some plastic wraps, and even I was planning to have some bricks in order to build again the most damaged areas of my house.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Anas and his neighbors even made plans for rebuilding the neighborhood.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: We can live with the dust, we can live with the depraise, but we learned by the hard way that always be fast.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: We don't have that much time in our lives.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: Then, just a week after Palestinians were allowed to return to Gaza City, President Trump gave a press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: I also strongly believe that the Gaza Strip, which has been a symbol of death and destruction for so many decades and so bad for the people anywhere near it, and especially those who live there, and frankly, who's been really very unlucky.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: It's been very unlucky. It's been an unlucky place for a long time.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Being in its presence just has not been good.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: And it should not go through a process of rebuilding and occupation by the same people that have really stood there and fought for it and lived there and died there and lived a miserable existence there.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: There was no reason, Trump said, for Palestinians to stay in Gaza. It's right now a demolition site.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: This is just a demolition site.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: And he put forward a plan. The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it, too. We'll own it.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Anas put his own plan to rebuild his house on pause.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: I started to feel that Mr. President Donald Trump is just giving me and the other people of Gaza the chance to say goodbye for one last time for our houses before he takes it from us.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: It's just like the farewell.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: It's been cold in Gaza City. Ana sees people, often children, searching the rubble for firewood.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: I reached a point four days ago that I burned one of my house doors.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Yes, I took it off. So, yesterday, I took some of the food, I started the fire, and I started to think, what am I going to eat today?
--:-- Aya Batrawi: Thank God, I grabbed some tomatoes with me, five eggs, a chili pepper, and some olive oil, and I made a shakshuka.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Yes, it's an Arabian-Palestinian dish that we truly love.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: So I made the shakshuka, which was the first time, to be honest, in 15 months to eat it.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: And I was super, super, super happy with that, with the result.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Then he heard a knock on the door.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: It was his neighbor.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: And he told me that I smelled that you made a fire.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: The neighbor asked if Anas could spare any wood.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: I told him, yes, I do have it. Do you want it?
--:-- Aya Batrawi: And he told me that he wants for his own daughter that she got birth two weeks ago and he needs to keep the room as warm as possible.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: I told him, yes, for sure.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: And if you need any woods, I'm going to get, like, I can take off another door for you.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: And so instead of rebuilding, for now, Anas will keep taking the doors down from his house.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: For himself and for his neighbors.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: We truly can live without nothing.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: But you cannot take the dignity, which is called al-karame.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: So the last thing that anyone can take from you is your dignity.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: Our land is our dignity.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: The ceasefire remains fragile.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: The first phase of the deal between Israel and Hamas ended on March 1st, with no agreements as to what comes next.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: On March 2nd, Israel blocked all goods and humanitarian aid from entering Gaza to pressure Hamas into a different deal, one that frees more hostages but does not end the war.
--:-- Aya Batrawi: Anas Baba continues to report for NPR from Gaza City.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: This episode was reported and produced by Justine Yan.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Additional production by Adelina Lansianese.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Editing by Jenny Schmidt.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Fact-checking by Will Chase.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: And audio engineering by Jimmy Keighley.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Thanks to Aya Batrawi, Dede Skanky, Daniel Estrin, and Mary Glenn Denning.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: The Sunday Story team includes Andrew Mambo, Kim Naderfang-Petersa, and our senior supervising producer, Liana Simstrom.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Irene Noguchi is our executive producer.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: I'm Aisha Roscoe.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Up First is back tomorrow with all the news you need to start your week.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Until then, have a great rest of your weekend.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: This message comes from NPR sponsor Rosetta Stone, an expert in language learning for 30 years.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Right now, NPR listeners can get Rosetta Stone's lifetime membership to 25 different languages for 50% off.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Learn more at rosettastone.com slash NPR.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Hartford.com.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: This message comes from Lisa. Lisa mattresses are meticulously designed and assembled in the USA for exceptional quality.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: And each mattress is designed with specific sleep positions and feel preferences in mind.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Plus, they back it all up with free shipping, easy returns, and a 100-night sleep trial.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Visit Lisa.com for 25% off mattresses, plus get an extra $50 off with promo code NPR.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: That's L-E-E-S-A dot com, promo code NPR.
