Lights of ships moved in the fairway—a great stir of lights going up and going down. And farther west on the upper reaches the place of the monstrous town was still marked ominously on the sky, a brooding gloom in sunshine, a lurid glare under the stars.
It was on a sunny, unseasonably warm day in the end of December, and the kids were playing outside with their cousins. I could hear them joining into the Arabic conversation with the blustery vocabulary of the very young. To my relief, they were truly bonding with their cousins—Ibrahim joining in with the boys playing Jaish and Shebab, the local version of cowboys and Indians, Amani playing “school” with the girls, and Karim, always joined by his two cousins, Ahmad and Muhammad. The little boys, aged four and five, had big, dark brown cartoon-cute eyes and could empty my cookie jar faster than a thirsty horse can drain a bucket. Together, the three of them were an awesome force. Now, looking back on that day, I’m convinced it was its peaceful comfort that made what was to happen seem even more horrific.
I was standing next to the open windows in my kitchen, enjoying the breeze and sunshine after days of frigid cold. Manar was visiting, looking up something on my computer, and I was washing dishes and lamenting the loss of my beloved coffee press after dropping it on the tile floor. That’s when we heard it—the sound of fighter jets streaking across the sky. Although it was normal to have a constant hum of military aircraft above the West Bank, the sudden volume told us that something had to be very wrong. It only took one look between us for us to both to sprint for the stairs to an upper balcony, where we could better see what was going on.
We stood, silent and unbelieving, and watched the planes streak by, leaving vapor trails like nasty snags in the satin-blue sky—and as they left our line of sight, they were replaced by a sound I’d never heard before: the deep, horrifying percussion of a bombardment more than thirty-five miles away.
It was December 27, 2008, and The Gaza War had begun.