It was one of the wintriest and blackest nights, the darkness gloomily wrapping Gaza’s narrow streets and sleeping people in its extended black blanket.
That night, all sounds were hushed, almost reverent in sympathy with Gaza’s second, sad anniversary of the Israeli war, which left a deep wound inside each heart and soul. I was asleep, or to be more accurate, I was feigning sleep, until the warm drop of a salty tear burned its way smoothly and slowly upon the upper part of my cheek, ending its journey in a trembling fall on the edge of my ear. It silently sank on my white, cold pillow. That lonely drop was followed by a flood of uncountable tears that rushed fast to express their utter grief. They stifled me. I got up in a desperate try to escape that wet, salty pillow, heartily confident that I will never be able to escape those melancholic recollections which occupied most of my memory and my whole life.
A shrunken, white piece of paper and a black pen were the first things I beheld after I got up. They were lying on my honey-colored, crowded desk, located on the left side of my bed. I sat at my desk, holding the sheet of paper in my right hand and the pen in the left. “This is a good chance to challenge your sorrow; if you fail, as usual, you will have to live with more pain and more sleepless nights.” These were the words my bleary mind and aching heart would pronounce ever since I had lost my much-praised abilities to express myself through words, the means that used to be my advocate whenever I got the chance to hold a pen and write. This night, I decided to follow the calls of my soul. They were calm and calling for me peacefully to write a letter to the innocent kid I lost that night.
The orange rays of the street lights added great solemnity to the holiness of the night’s darkness, and melted with it to create a new fiery color that surprisingly took my breath away, slipping smoothly through the western window I had opened earlier and reflecting upon the desk where I was sitting motionless. The rays illumined my soul and inflamed my desire to pick up a new paper to write a complete letter to admit my fatal fault and announce my truthful repentance in order to get rid of this torturing regret. At last, I put my pen to the paper and started to ruin its purity with some connected black lines that formed the characters of my letter.
My dear son,
I really want you to read each and every single word I write here, because I am no longer able to keep the story in my heart. I promise this time I will try to complete the letter. I promise I will not tear it up. For I need you to understand what happened. I need to explain to you because you were asleep when you died, when you were slain. Every single memory tortures me and reminds me of that cursed night.
It was a cold night; can you remember it?
Seconds passed and I got no answer. I submissively continued.
I am sure you can. It was really cold. You were lying asleep beside me. Your warm breaths were blowing near my face and neck. Your heartbeats were harmonically delicate. I was used to them. They were the soft recital which I could never sleep without first feeling, while contemplating your face’s perfectly created features. I have lost that innocence when I lost you that night. You doubt it, right? It is the absolute truth, my child.
Again, I waited, but I got nothing except the remains of my stifled words, the words I have never said. I resumed.
We—you and me, and my mother, father, brothers, and sisters—were all asleep in the dining room of our house. We thought it would be the safest room. Alas! It wasn’t. Nights before, Dad suggested that we all should leave our rooms and sleep together in the dining room, because our rooms had windows that might break as a result of the bombings which dominated Gaza’s nights and days. We all moved to the dining room.
The western winds continued blowing softly through the window behind me. It had been one of my habits to sleep with the window open to rid myself of the smell of death and the grave-like silence that kept reminding me of my loneliness. A tremor shook my body while I was recalling memories and waiting insanely for my son’s answers. The western wind turned me into a piece of marble in the darkness of the freezing winter. It felt cleansing for a little while, spreading its wings of purity. However, its attempts were all in vain. I remained wounded.
It started thundering and raining. Little crystal drops of rain sneaked with the wind into the room and lightly hit me, then trickled down my naked neck. I trembled again. A tiny smile slipped away from my lips when the smell of the muddy earth started to fill the quivering air.
It is raining. A few days before that night, it was silent except for the noisy rain. How cute your picture was when I painted you sitting underneath the rain. Actually, you weren’t out under the rain on that day. Hairless and cold, you were seated, with your strawberry-colored lips and childish looks, like those of a kitten begging for love, exhaling your breaths on the freezing window, creating your own world of steam only to scribble it with your tiny fingers. You laughed your heart out as you painted a new world of steam, and spoiled it again and again. At that very moment, I was enjoying the same sound of rain and the same smell of earth. I was drawing you with the tiniest detail of the chuckles you gave whenever a few raindrops softly fell on your bald head.
You didn’t like it when I teased you with an instigating smile, calling you “bald kid.” Sometimes, you would cry, tearing my heart apart, and other times you would laugh charmingly. I couldn’t understand it, but I liked it when I called you “bald kid.” Are you crying or laughing now, my son? Does my calling you bald now that you’re a year older make you happy or angry? I wish I knew.
In that picture, some raindrops were on your head, others on your eyelashes, trembling slightly. With shiny, dark eyes, you were sitting on the wet grass laughing. You liked that picture as much as I liked the rain; I lost it the same night I lost your glittering eyes and delightful smile….
Two teardrops were imprisoned at the edge of my eyes. They finally prevailed.
That night at 4:50 a.m., my alarm clock woke me up to the peaceful sound of a folk song in which the singer asks his mother not to be sad after his martyrdom, for he will be in paradise. I always liked it, but not after what happened later that night. It now revolts me. I turned the alarm off in order not to annoy you and the other sleepers in the room. I got up, seeking a prayer before the dawn prayer time. You were fast asleep. Others in the room were sound asleep after a long battle with sleeplessness due to the buzzing of dozens of warplanes that had been hovering over Gaza for two weeks. Darkness dominated the scene. I turned my flashlight on to avoid stepping on my brothers, who were sleeping on the floor. Peacefully, I passed, got ready for praying, and entered my room with a sense of longing invading my heart, reminding me of the long nights and days spent there telling stories about the melted past and the coming bright future. The future seemed to decay that night. Hope seemed to be thinning. Only you gave me hope; only your future gave mine a purpose.
I started to pray and implored God to save my family and our home. A moment before I ended my prayer, a massive explosion shook the building, drilling my ears and throwing me meters away from my prayer rug. The explosion was paired with a terrifying sound of glass crashing in and out of the house. Terribly frightened, I ran toward the dining room where you and the family were. They all got up holding their flashlights, running instinctively with horror, making sure everyone was okay. They had only small cuts. Seconds passed and everything was calm again, and the holiness of darkness and quietness controlled the scene. You remained asleep. I have to admit, I smiled when I saw you asleep. You did not care. My mother was still worried and asked my brother to go with her to make sure that our uncle’s family, who has an apartment beside ours, was okay. My uncle opened his door at the same time that Mom and my brother opened ours. He said, “Don’t worry. We are all okay, but what was that? What did they target…” Before the end of his words, a greater explosion took place on the stairs between the two apartments.
The whole building quaked. White dust rose and covered the place. Rubble violently rushed into the apartment. The doors came off their hinges. Everyone was shaken. And you were still asleep. For a few moments, I forgot you. Mom started to shout, “Say the shahada and go downstairs! Get out of the building! These missiles are targeting us!”
I put my pen down in a depressed attempt to stop the flood of the painful memories that started rushing into my exhausted mind. I couldn’t. My son should know each detail in order to forgive me. I went on.
Mom’s words stayed in my ears: “Say the shahada and go downstairs.” However, I didn’t leave right away. I went to the dining room to fetch you, yet I passed through my room on my way to the dining room to have a last look and paint the last picture of it in my mind. I saw my now disorganized text books which had been waiting for the end of that hideous war and begging me to hold them again as I used to do since I joined college after your father’s martyrdom two years ago. I saw my crowded bookshelves, my closet, my prayer rug, and even my red glasses. All were scattered here and there. My mother’s voice reverted strongly: “Say the shahada and go downstairs.” I wasn’t aware of anything; I left my room headed toward the dining room to get you when I saw my weeping young cousins entering our apartment instead of going downstairs. It was extremely dark, and they were crying loudly. I asked one of them, “What are you doing here? Why don’t you go down?” With a trembling voice he answered, “There’s no flashlight. We can’t see.” I was really worried that one of them might enter another room and be forgotten in the darkness. “Come kids, follow me,” I said and took them quickly.
“I can’t walk; the stones are hurting my foot. I want my shoes,” one of them said. “Please, bring me my shoes.”
“No time, dear. We will bring them later.” I was wholly sure that we would never be able to bring them ever again.
Seconds after our exit, the third missile hit the third floor, where we were.
“I was there, Mom. You left me there, Mom. I was alone with nothing but my tears and mournful cries, Mom.”
My son’s voice penetrated my ears. I dropped my pen as chills ran through my body. Shockingly, he was sitting in front of me with his white robe, bald head, and shiny eyes, gazing at my teary, black eyes, smiling and saying, “I’m home alone, Mom.” I couldn’t handle the shock and remained silent for a little while, staring back at the blurry image of my son.
Nature’s anger increased; the thunder started to become louder, the western winds became stronger, a lightning bolt illuminated the room, and my kid looked like a white, bright ghost with inflamed eyes. I could utter no word while my son’s voice became quieter, repeating the same sentence: “I was alone, Mom. I was alone, Mom. I was alone…” and then disappeared.
I made no movement and said nothing until a breeze blew over my body and gave life to my consciousness again. Hesitantly, I held my pen again. Determined to continue till the end, I wrote.
We stayed for nearly three minutes at our neighbor’s house, waiting for the last missile which put an end to the story of our home, when the holy sound of the dawn prayer calls interrupted the hardest moments of waiting: “Allah is the Greatest; Allah is the Grea….” The massive explosion of the F-16 missile vaporized the sound of the prayer calls and deafened us. My body sagged in agony, and I whispered, “It’s gone.” Seconds later, I left our neighbor’s house and saw ours burning like a volcano. Nothing but fire. I thought of nothing. I said nothing and did nothing except gaze at the burning memories of my life with my heart vanishing, when suddenly your picture flashed in my mind. I started running unconsciously towards the burning building, calling your name and bursting into tears, when my father grasped my arm, firmly preventing me from going there. He was sure that you had died. Nothing could survive that blaze, let alone thirty pounds of tender flesh. They shouted for the fire engine and the ambulance to help. The scene was too excruciating to bear. I fainted.
That night, I lost you. I remembered you again when I woke up in the hospital. I remembered that I forgot you alone there. I realized that I will be all alone after your and your father’s martyrdom. You are alone, and I am alone. You will stay alone. I will stay alone. You died alone, and I will die alone. That night, I missed your warm breaths, harmonic heartbeats, and charming smile. That night, I lost my son.
My pen calmly fell down, my tears abundantly welled up, my head heavily struck the table, and mournfully, I wept. My tongue couldn’t stop repeating the word “alone,” infesting the silence of that night. I heard nothing but my mother’s whisper. “I pity her,” she said. “She is still lamenting. She keeps on writing every night but those who die never come back.”
She kept on whispering, and I kept on lamenting, “Together we lived, and alone you died.”