How war-wounded patients are finding hope in a hospital in Jordan: ‘People can rebuild their lives’

Shams, aged two, was injured while her mother Noura was carrying her in Iraq. An airstrike occurred in front of them and they were both badly hurt. They had burn wounds across their bodies. Shams had more severe injuries on her face. She partially lost her eyesight, and the movement in her hands was restricted.

Shams has been a patient at a Médecins Sans Frontières/ Doctors Without Borders (MSF) hospital in Amman, the capital of Jordan, in the decade since.

Now aged 13, Shams has grown up receiving treatment and support from the hospital. It provides specialist rehabilitative care and reconstructive surgery to war-wounded patients from across the Middle East, including Palestine, Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

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A powerful photography exhibition displayed at the Oxo Gallery in London shows the life-saving medical care given to patients like Shams at the hospital. They were photographed by Rehab Eldalil, an Egyptian photographer who worked with 32 patients over a 10-day visit.

“I collaborate with the protagonists. They’re not just subjects. They’re part of the storytelling. They’re part of the creative process, and we work together to create that autonomy. When I was approached to work on this, it was with that same mindset of how to create a collaborative story that breaks the pattern of victimhood,” Eldalil tells the Big Issue.

The exhibition, From the Ashes, I Rose, not only displays photographs of the patients but also works of art by them. The wallpaper which sets the backdrop for the photos is drawings by the patients, including Shams.

“Shams is fierce. She taught me how to use TikTok, which I didn’t know how to start. She’s an artist. She has drawings in the exhibition that are depicted as wallpapers. She’s confident and she’s unapologetically herself. It’s extremely inspiring, and her relationship with her mother is also very inspiring for me as a mother,” Eldhalil says.

“I have a daughter myself and seeing how Noura is not just there for her daughter but it’s also this companionship. Nothing is beyond mother and daughter relationship, but there is a new layer when they share their trauma and they triumph over trauma together.”

The MSF hospital in Amman was established in 2006 in response to the Iraq war, and the exhibition coincides with a celebration of its 20-year anniversary.

Natalie Roberts, executive director at MSF, explains: “It really is a unique project in the humanitarian sphere. Our teams do the life-saving elements on the frontlines with the wounded patients and then you don’t know what to do with them next. Their life has been saved but they need further medical care, and that care wasn’t available in Iraq.”

It was not possible at that time to build a hospital for reconstructive surgery in Iraq, so they chose Jordan, which was stable and allowed MSF to take patients from Iraq to safety. Here, they had the time to for surgical treatments, recovery and any additional therapies they needed, whether that be mental health care or physiotherapy.

“Over the last 20 years, we’ve seen so many different conflicts and wars in that region that it’s ended up serving a population far beyond the original wounded from the Iraq War,” Roberts says. 

As a doctor, she worked extensively in Syria in 2012 to 2013 and it was built into operations that if there was a person who needed more support than they were able to give on the frontlines, and they could get them to Jordan, they could be admitted to that hospital.

“It’s extremely depressing and frustrating when you’re seeing that level of violence and the numbers of wounded. Every single wound is devastation for that person, for their family, for their society, and it can be really dispiriting when you can try your hardest to patch them up, but then you leave them again,” Roberts says.

“You’re there for the short term, and a lot of people you can’t really make much difference for. I think to see it from the other side and show that there can be a life after that, after that massively traumatic event, it is really important for people to see that there is hope. There is hope even in the most dreadful of circumstances. People can rebuild their lives.”

Recently, the hospital has taken in patients from Gaza, but they have not been able to evacuate nearly as many patients as they would have liked.

As of October 2025, the World Health Organization reports that more than 15,600 people – one in four of whom are children – are awaiting lifesaving medical evacuation from Gaza. The UK has so far accepted only 39 people for medical evacuation from Gaza, although the government has pledged to take in more.

“But there are places that are specialised in dealing with that, that have the capacity to deal with that, and they’re not being used,” Roberts says. “We’ve managed to get only 10 people out over the last two years [to the hospital in Jordan], even though it’s only a few miles away from Gaza.”

Despite the ceasefire, Roberts believes that “devastation for people will continue for generations to come”. 

From the Ashes, I Rose depicts the lifesaving work that the MSF hospital in Jordan is not only doing now but will continue to do in the future. It supports people, many of whom will be permanently disabled, to return to their home countries and lives.

When Eldalil first arrived in the hospital, she led an art therapy workshop with a group of patients where she asked them to draw themselves as superheroes, and some of those drawings are displayed in the exhibition.

“I’m not going there to create narratives that talk about their traumatising experiences,” she says. “I’m trying to celebrate their resistance and their resilience and their recovery process. They are, in my eyes, heroes. I want the audience to look at them in that way, not look at them as body counts that you read in the news.”

A complementary photographic exhibition depicting the lifesaving medical work of MSF, featuring interactive activities for children, is being held alongside From the Ashes, I Rose. 

The shows run from today (29 October) until Sunday 2 November 2025 at the Oxo Gallery, Oxo Tower Wharf, Barge House St, Southbank, London SE1 9PH, 11am–6pm daily.

Find out how to support MSF here.

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