His family's factory and its warehouses were destroyed and burned during Israel's war on Gaza. Al-Sawwaf says 80 to 85 percent of his yarn and materials went up in flames. More of his stock is in a warehouse inside the area Israel controls, and he cannot reach it. What he has left is wool and acrylic that was imported before the war, together with whatever he could pull from the ruins.
He designed the hand-turned wheel himself. He based it on the equipment his grandfather used. The family has always woven without depending on electricity. Earlier, the workshop used a hand-operated wooden tool called the nol, so the power cuts that are part of daily life in Gaza never stopped the work.
In Arabic, the name al-Sawwaf means the wool worker.
Much of Gaza's weaving began in al-Majdal, a town to the north that is now Ashkelon. Weavers who were displaced from there to the Gaza Strip in 1948 took their skills with them. Many later moved from weaving cloth to making carpets and rugs.
For years the trade grew weaker. After the blockade began in 2007, Gaza's craftspeople lost their buyers in the West Bank and Israel. Cheap imported straw mats took over local markets. In 2019 Hussein's father, Mahmoud Husni al-Sawwaf, was 73. A report that year described him as possibly the last traditional carpet weaver in Gaza. He sold mostly to aid workers and visitors, because few of his neighbours could afford his carpets. He has since died.
Now the market has changed in an unexpected way. Carpets, rugs and floor mats are hard to find in Gaza, and al-Sawwaf says his handmade rugs cost less than other floor coverings. People are buying from the weaver again, for their homes.
He has also taken back several of the men who worked in the old factory. The war left them displaced and without income. In the room beneath his house, the family craft is also a way for them to earn a living.
The workshop is near the Sanafor junction, close to the Yellow Line that Israeli forces pulled back to under last October's ceasefire. Al-Sawwaf keeps turning the wheel, and the rug grows one row at a time.