Under Fire: Humza Yousaf's Gaza Family Ordeal, Reviewed

Humza Yousaf's mother-in-law texted him from Gaza: "Humza, I think we are about to die. I need you to promise me that you will take care of my girls."

The message arrived a week into Israel's bombing of Gaza in 2023, which followed Hamas's deadly terrorist attack on Israel. Elizabeth, a retired nurse from Dundee, and her Palestinian husband, Maged, had been visiting family in Gaza. They became trapped there when the bombing began. The text reached Yousaf during the SNP conference, on the eve of his first speech as Scotland's newly elected first minister.

Under Fire is the short, deeply affecting book Yousaf has written about that month. It details his and his wife Nadia El-Nakla's nightmare as her parents remained stranded, making repeated attempts to flee while friends and neighbours whose homes had been destroyed filled the house and food ran out. On the night Elizabeth texted, the family 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".

What does the book reveal about the escape attempts?

The Israeli government said it would let foreign nationals leave. 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: civilian casualties, no clean water, no medical supplies. He performed surgeries without anaesthetic, often lit by the light from a mobile phone.

The narrative alternates between Gaza and Bute House. Yousaf attended meetings and delivered speeches while wrestling with what to make public and what to keep private about his family, and he and his aides pleaded with the Foreign Office in London to help get Elizabeth and Maged out. He eventually chose to share their story to raise awareness of the horrors visited on Gaza's civilian population.

Where does the book succeed and where does it stray?

Yousaf is a natural communicator, though his writing sometimes lacks flair. He conveys effectively the stress and torment of governing through a family crisis. The title carries a dual meaning: the terrifying ordeal of Palestinians in Gaza, and the scrutiny that comes with being not just Scotland's first minister but the first Muslim leader of a country that is 95% non-Muslim and overwhelmingly white.

Not everything lands. A secondary narrative about stepping out of the shadow of his mentor and predecessor Nicola Sturgeon sits awkwardly in a book primarily about a family in crisis. 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.

The political passages that do belong are his sharpest. Yousaf criticises the then British foreign secretary James Cleverly for initially failing to pick up the phone to him, even after Yousaf had spoken publicly about his parents-in-law being stranded. He does not mince his words about Rishi Sunak either, chastising the prime minister for failing to provide updates for worried British citizens with family in Gaza.

The book stands as a record of how one family's crisis collided with the highest office in Scottish politics — and of the questions it raised about who governments answer to when civilians cannot get out of a war zone.