Heather Layton sat cross-legged in a big armchair off her living room. This is where she calls her friend, Baher.
“We talk until our batteries run out on our phones,” she said, laughing.
Sometimes the call goes unanswered, and Layton worries Baher and his family are dead.
On this particular day, he answered.
“I didn’t have wi-fi at my place,” he explained.
It was nighttime in Gaza, and cold. This winter is one of the coldest in decades, made worse by intense wind and rain. Baher stood outside in a heavy jacket to be closer to a neighbor’s internet connection.
“Are you safe?” Layton asked.
“It’s no problem,” he answered. “We need to make this happen.”
On the surface, Layton and Baher make for unlikely friends.
Layton is an American artist and a professor at the University of Rochester, living with her husband in Brighton. Baher is a Palestinian father of five living in a concrete shelter in Gaza.
They met in 2015, when Baher was an international graduate student studying education at Nazareth University and Layton’s husband, Brian, invited him over for dinner. It happened to be Baher’s birthday, so they served cake and sang.
“I felt like, I’m really cared for,” said Baher. “I’m really between my friends and my family.”
When Baher moved back to Gaza, they kept in touch.
“Then, since the beginning of this war,” Baher said, “Heather talked to us almost every day.”
As the violence escalated, Layton felt compelled to check in constantly, but struggled with what to say.
“Before we had art, it was like, ‘Hey, are you still alive?’” she said.
To lighten their conversations, Layton showed him and his children photos of her students’ artwork.
“Art was like the third person in the room,” she said.
Soon, Layton began making her own drawings for Baher’s children, especially his three oldest daughters, Remas (15), Enas (13) and Retal (11).
She drew them animals, birthday cards, their names in bubble letters. They sent drawings back: a donut with sprinkles, birds, the Palestinian flag.
But the girls’ drawings also reflected their reality — fleeing their childhood home, their school reduced to rubble, a food truck being raided.
At the height of the blockade, Baher said, his family struggled to access food and water. Layton felt helpless from more than 5,000 miles away.
“I was spending every day thinking, I wish I could just get them here, I wish I could get them food. I wish I could get them water,” she said. “And then, as we’re making art, I’m like, wait a second — I can do that.”
Layton drew a series of pictures tracing the journey of a glass of water from Rochester to Gaza. Each image shows a bright blue pipe winding through landscapes and infrastructure, carrying water through stores, across mountains, across oceans. She called the series “I wish I could send you this glass of water.”
When Layton drew the pipe reaching the wall surrounding Gaza, she sent drawings to the girls.
They responded with five drawings of their own: a plumber splitting the pipe into branches, diverting water to shelters, water trucks and people across Gaza.
“They started thinking about how to use their pipeline in an efficient way,” Baher said. “They felt of other people before themselves. That made me feel very proud of them.”
From there, the drawings moved back and forth.
The pipe runs through a missile strike. Children swim in water between piles of rubble. The girls hold a Palestinian flag next to a sign that reads: “Thank you for this lifeline, Heather.”
When Layton shared the story with her close friends and family, they were moved. They sent the family money and drawings of their own. Together, they wrote more than 500 letters to politicians and officials, eventually reaching the President of the United Nations General Assembly, Annalena Baerbock, who referenced the girls and their drawings in a speech at the UN Two State conference in September 2025.
“We owe it to the children like Remas, Enas and Retal, and all the children of Palestine and all the children of Isreal hoping for a better tomorrow,” she said.
Baher showed everybody the clip.
“I was running like a [chicken] with its head cut,” he said. “The president of the general assembly talking about my kids. I made everybody listen to that, and I shared the link with pride.”
Layton still exchanges art with the girls, but the glass of water series is mostly complete.
“I have a different responsibility now,” she said. “It felt urgent to bring people into that story.”
She added it is not always easy.
“Just saying the word Gaza is so political,” Layton said. “But I can just talk about my relationship, my friendship and my family. We feel very much like a family now.”
In Gaza, a ceasefire reduced some of the immediate danger, but Baher still fears for his family’s safety.
“Many times I look at my kids before they go to bed and I think that might be the last time I see them,” he said. “I lost hope in a lot of cases.”
But when he sees how people like Layton and her family care about his children, he feels something else.
“Hope is coming in like water. A plethora of hope, a plethora of resilience, a plethora of care,” he said. “That pipeline was not only carrying water. It carried the most valuable thing on earth, which is humanity.”
Veronica Volk is an audio journalist and podcast enthusiast at WXXI. On instagram @soundslikeveronica.
