Under Fire by Humza Yousaf – a deeply affecting story of being stranded in Gaza

A week into Israel’s bombing of Gaza in 2023, which followed Hamas’s deadly terrorist attack on Israel, Scotland’s then first minister Humza Yousaf received a text from his mother-in-law, Elizabeth. “Humza, I think we are about to die. I need you to promise me that you will take care of my girls.”

Elizabeth, a retired nurse from Dundee, and her Palestinian husband, Maged, had been visiting family in Gaza and become trapped there when the bombing began. Not only were people dying all around them, but their house was filling up with friends and neighbours whose homes had been destroyed, and they were running out of food. On the night Elizabeth texted, they had been told to leave their neighbourhood of Deir al-Balah ahead of a fresh wave of Israeli strikes. They later learned the evacuation order was a false alarm. Even so, Yousaf reflects, “in the four weeks from hell, this felt like the lowest point”.

Under Fire is a short yet deeply affecting book detailing Yousaf and his wife Nadia El-Nakla’s month-long nightmare as Elizabeth and Maged remained stranded in Gaza, during which they made repeated attempts to flee. The Israeli government had said it would let foreign nationals leave, though for Yousaf’s in-laws this appeared to be an empty pledge. More than once they made the perilous journey to Rafah, on the border with Egypt, only to be turned away when they got there. Meanwhile, Nadia’s brother was working in a Gaza hospital and sending desperate updates about civilian casualties, the lack of clean water and medical supplies and how he was performing surgeries without anaesthetic, often lit by the light from a mobile phone.

Yousaf and his family’s agonising plight unfolds as he goes about his duties as the newly elected first minister. The text from Elizabeth arrived during the SNP conference, on the eve of his first speech. As a result, much of the narrative concerns his efforts to meet his responsibilities in Scotland while trying to comfort and support his wife and children. All the while, he and his aides plead with the Foreign Office in London to help get Elizabeth and Maged out.

Yousaf is a natural communicator and, though his writing sometimes lacks flair, he effectively conveys the stress and torment that comes with attending meetings and delivering speeches while wrestling with what to make public and what to keep private regarding his family. In the end he decides to share what is happening to his in-laws to raise awareness about the horrors being visited on Gaza’s civilian population. The title Under Fire has a dual meaning, describing the terrifying ordeal of Palestinians in Gaza and the scrutiny and criticism that comes not just with being Scotland’s first minister but the first Muslim leader of a country that is 95% non-Muslim and overwhelmingly white.

There is another narrative here concerning Yousaf’s struggles to make his way politically and step out of the shadow of his mentor and predecessor Nicola Sturgeon, which sits awkwardly in a book that is primarily about a family in crisis. Similarly, his diatribe about Kate Forbes, his rival for the top job, and her “clumsy” leadership campaign would suit a straightforward political memoir, but here feels out of place.

More pertinent are Yousaf’s criticisms of the then British foreign secretary James Cleverly for initially failing to pick up the phone to him, even after he had spoken publicly about his parents-in-law being stranded. Neither does he mince his words about Rishi Sunak, whom he chastises for failing to provide updates for worried British citizens with family in Gaza.