I have had two best friends in my life. The first was when I was in school and college. The second was Ayman Al-Damma, a Gaza Palestinian who lived in a town north of Gaza City in the Gaza Strip. A massive Israeli air strike on Saturday killed Ayman’s mother and severely injured Ayman. They rushed Ayman to the Baptist hospital in Gaza City and he underwent surgery, but he passed away on Sunday morning. The news devasted me and my family.

I was born and raised in Bessemer and have lived in Alabama almost my entire life. How could a Gaza Palestinian be my best friend?

I said “almost” my entire life. The only other place I have lived was in Gaza City from 1993 to 1995, teaching English with the Southern Baptist Church when I was in my early 20’s. Ayman was one of my students and I got to know him and his family very well. Over the years, I have been back to Gaza to visit several times, and each visit I spent time with him and his growing family. My wife and 5 ½-year old daughter visited Gaza with me in 2015 and met Ayman, his six children, and his extended family.

I have talked and videoed with Ayman multiple times a year for the last twenty years, but I have done so more frequently since the war began. I just videoed with him on Thursday in fact. A few weeks ago, my family and I videoed with him and his family for over an hour. They got to meet Ayman’s first grandson, who was born during the war. His father, Ayman’s son-in-law Mohammed, was killed by the Israeli military when Ayman’s grandson was just a few weeks old as an innocent bystander.

Ayman was a really good guy. He was very, very bright. He taught chemistry in a local high school in Jabalia and was considered a scholar in the neighborhood. His English was superb, especially given that he lived in Gaza his entire life. I would like to say that I contributed to his English fluency, but that’s not really true – he knew a lot of English when I met him and continued to improve his English over the years after I left Gaza. Frankly, his English vocabulary was better than mine.

Ayman was the most apolitical friend I have in Gaza. He was neither a supporter of Hamas nor its secular rival Fateh (a Palestinian political party). He, like all other Palestinians and most of the world, thought that the Palestinians’ cause was just and they deserved their own real (not fake) state. But Ayman did not believe in violence against civilians anywhere. I woke up on the morning of October 7 to texts and voice mails from Ayman – I assure you he was just as appalled as we were about the Hamas attack. We immediately knew it would bring death and destruction to many innocent Gaza civilians. But if you had told us then over 42,000 Gazans would be dead by now (it is likely more), at least 70% of whom were likely innocent civilians (including over 17,000 children), we would not have believed it.

The northern Gaza Strip has been under siege by the Israeli military since October 5. But Ayman’s immediate neighborhood as of last week had not experienced the intense bombing and shelling that other nearby areas had experienced. One of the reasons, he always assured me, was that in his local area none of the families were affiliated with Hamas.

The Israeli military started pushing toward his neighborhood early last week. When we spoke on Thursday, he had recently returned to his family building having taken shelter earlier that day in his uncle’s home that had a basement. We actually discussed how much safer that building was – he even brought up the subject of Alabama tornados, which he learned about from me.

The massive Israeli bombing that killed him and his mother, however, was not precipitated by other bombing and shelling, and hit completely without any warning (as have tens of thousands of other Israeli strikes during this war). It struck three multi-story family buildings next to Ayman’s family’s multi-story. Those three families had nothing to do with Hamas.

Many people I know have been killed in this war. The first was an 84-year old Gaza Christian lady, Ilham Farah, who played the piano at the Gaza Baptist Church. She was shot in the leg by an Israeli sniper in November 2023, and bled to death in the street overnight after the Israeli military prevented people from coming to her aid. But thankfully, as far as I know, the guys I hung out with who were around my age (students, basketball teammates, and neighborhood friends) are still alive. Ayman is the first I know to be killed. And it was very, very difficult to hear the news.

I will miss my conversations with my friend. I will fondly remember the long conversations we had about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; the various reasons he frowned on various suitors for his two oldest daughters (some of which were insanely funny); the various colorful characters in his town; how to deal with children, including one of his boys who some in the family called a “devil” when he was a young child; and maybe most of all simply about life and growing older. I cannot count the times Ayman told me “really Glenn, you are part of our family – you are one of us!” I always thought that maybe some of it was just the famous Arab hospitality toward foreigners, but now I know he meant it.

There is really nice saying in Arabic when someone dies — انا لله وانا اليه راجعون. “To God we belong and to him we shall return.” I know Ayman is with God now. Rest in peace my friend.

Glenn Glover is a Bessemer native and a Birmingham lawyer.