In the week after we saw each other, I kept trying to push you out of my mind, but news of what was happening between Israel and Gaza filled newspapers and Internet feeds. He’s there! the universe kept saying. Think about him! I scoured every photo for its credit, looking for your name. I found it on a particularly arresting image. Five women, all in headscarves, all wailing. One was reaching out in front of her, as if to stop whatever was going on outside the frame. It was a funeral, I read, for a Palestinian boy who was killed. So I knew—you’d left Jerusalem and were in Gaza City.
A few weeks later, the news media started calling the conflict an actual war. I was glued to the television, horrified as battles erupted while I watched. There were so many children there; some looked like they could have been in first grade like Violet, or in Liam’s preschool class. I watched a journalist interview a woman who explained that she didn’t let any of her three children sleep in the same room at night, so that if a bomb hit one part of her house, it wouldn’t kill all her children at once. Then I saw the families who didn’t have houses left at all.
“Want to watch CSI?” Darren asked, dropping next to me on the couch, while I had the news on.
“Sure,” I said, changing the channel. But I couldn’t follow the storyline. My mind—and my heart—were still in Gaza City.