They came in the middle of the night. It was hot. The electricity was out, so we had our windows wide open. I heard them when they pulled up in their pickup trucks. You could almost see them through the shutters. I tried to get a better look through the peephole, while waving the children to go back to sleep.
We were expecting it, it just took them longer to get to us.
Why are we here? We had nowhere else to go.
Those who could, left. Years ago.
Three men stayed downstairs at the entrance. The drivers turned off the engines and lights; you could barely make out the pickups. Two of them walked to one end of the street, a few more walked to the other end, then disappeared behind the heaps. With all their clicking and chirping, their radios sounded like little birds. There weren’t any patrols in our district. Not that night. Not any night.
It was pitch dark. And their faces were covered. But still, you could see right through the masks they wore. I don’t need to tell you who they were. A group of them climbed up, floor by floor. One of them stayed behind on each landing. Their flashlights went on and then off again. We held our breath as one of them knocked on doors with the butt of his rifle. No one opened. No one said a word.
Five men went up all the way to the third floor. Outside, you could hear the portable generators humming and coughing. Then there were a couple shots from down the street. I remember hearing a car’s engine, another shot, and then silence. A long silence. It was like we suddenly remembered how hot it was, and we went back to fanning ourselves while we waited in that silence.
When they shouted, “Ibrahim Jabrawi, come out!” none of us was surprised. What surprised us was that he opened the door. Then a scuffle, cries and sobs. I wasn’t close enough to hear what happened next, but the man next door heard everything. Ibrahim told them he would come with them. He asked them to leave his family in peace. Then all you could hear was the sound of bone and flesh on concrete.
You know how time stops when you get a shock? Well, that’s what we felt as we sat there waiting in the darkness. For minutes. The whole building could feel the silence. It was like getting a shock. That silence was an electric wire lying on the ground.
They told me later that some revolvers are louder than rifles. But what would I know?
The children on the fourth floor began to cry right after the first shot. No one saw a thing, but that did not prevent us from seeing everything. Even those who kept their eyes closed tight saw it all. Those kids kept crying until the last shot, then the building went quiet.
As soon as we heard the pickups roar off, we lit lanterns and rushed over. We told the women to get towels and buckets of water. Not because it would do any good, but because we didn’t want them to see five bodies swimming in a pool of blood. Two were so young that the blast severed their heads.
By the next afternoon, we all left and came here to the stadium. They say people moved into our apartments on the day we left. I don’t know who’s living there now and I don’t care.