Gaza Writes Back

by Refaat Alareer

  Hamza assured himself that he would not have the least trouble, in case, one day, he became a father and his children ask him to tell them a story. He was standing by the window and reflecting on the past few days. “One week! Oh, time goes by so slow,” Hamza muttered, resting his head in his hands which were resting on the windowsill. He looked at the vacant street below, recalling how lively it used to be, and feeling queasy, he raised his head. The view of the blue sky dotted with a few light clouds moving overhead amused him; it revived his low spirits. “At least, you’ve got some life,” he muttered again, lowering his head. The street was not totally vacant; two stray dogs trotted along, lolling their tongues and wagging their tails. Hamza, delighted, opened his mouth to call the dogs. He wanted to say something, he wanted to call them, and for a moment, he had a sincere desire to yelp. But his desire had not lasted for long. He raised his head again; the sound of hovering overhead was difficult to ignore. He focused his eyes on the two choppers tearing their way through the clouds as the two dogs below stood in the middle of the street. Hamza was mindful enough to discern the message of both the hovering choppers above and the wagging dogs below. He was reflecting on his unchanging status, and exasperated at grasping the discrepancy between his own status, and that of the sky and earth. He had an unequalled capability to dig deeply into the happenings around him, and little unimportant incidents which were insignificant to others, profoundly inspired him, though he thoroughly failed to notice his mother calling out for him to eat his lunch—or else Jihad and the little ones would eat it up, she joked.

  It grew darker, and thus harder to read, as the sun peacefully, sank to bestow a new life on other people. Hamza, sinking into the darkness, struggled to read the dark lines lying lifelessly before him. It dawned on him earlier that as long as we sought life, we could give it, and there always must be life close to us, closer than we imagine. He had some life to live among darkness; Hamza had not failed to see it lying before him. “Everybody has fallen asleep. That’s another thing to be proud of,” he thought, relaxing his eyes. Looking down at the page, he entertained a series of thoughts. The occasional creaks coming from the farthest door on the other side could not disturb him from his prolonged musings. “Well, I’ve got a lot to be proud of,” he said to himself, conceitedly.

  Then, suddenly, “Hey, you’re still awake!” came the soft, low voice of his brother Jihad.

  Hamza kept quiet for a moment. “Yeah, just reading a few pages before I go to sleep,” he whispered, smiling at his brother as he uttered his words.

  “Oh, yeah, I know,” Jihad whispered back. He moved closer, his blanket over his shoulder dragging on the floor, and seated himself next to Hamza. Hamza commenced scanning his book, his legs lying half-bare as the folds of his slacks piled up at his knees. Jihad, noting this, drew the blanket to shield his brother’s legs; he could feel they were threatened, though he did not know by what. Covering them would help him or, at the very least, help his brother’s concentration.

  Even in good, tranquil times, Jihad was afraid of darkness. He hated silence and never liked being cold. He avoided the three conditions when alone, but in the presence of Hamza, he braved the darkness with his laughs. He turned his face, gazed at Hamza, and anxiously observed his eyes were fixed.

  Cold air wafted across their faces. Jihad felt a great desire to break the horrifying silence, so, confidently, he interrupted his brother’s feigned reading. He stated in a clear, loud tone, “I won’t go to school. When the war’s over.” He grinned.

  Hamza, immediately, turned his face and lowered his gaze to meet his brother’s. “You won’t?”

  Widening his eyes in astonishment, he whispered. “Yeah, they say it’s going to be an open week,” Jihad attempted cunningly. “And I know what they’re going to tell us, so I’ll just stay home,” Jihad continued, his eyes beaming through darkness.

  Hamza was not surprised by his little brother’s clear and confident statement. “I see; you don’t need to go,” he said. “But you won’t spend that week playing, will you? I’ll bring you another two stories. How does that sound?” Hamza went on, admiringly, his smile broadening as he said this.

  Jihad exchanged looks with him for moments, and, neglecting the cold darkness, he said cheerfully, “Yeah, I’ll read whatever you bring me.” He then, feeling secure, sank under his blanket and, soon enough, fell asleep. Encompassed by silent, cold darkness, Hamza thought about the bright future awaiting Jihad. He swore under his breath to make every effort he could to make that happen.

  Hamza whiled the night away, his book in his lap, his hands flipping the pages, one after the other. He had not known he would have such persistence during a night spent with no company except that of cold darkness and the amusing wheezing of his little sleeping brother, a persistence that empowered him to satiate his hunger lavishly by devouring the words mercilessly. He breathed a thoroughly new life into himself.

  Hamza strove to open his eyes a few hours later. He failed, but, persistent, he had to fight. He failed again, expectedly. His smile never vanished from his lips while sleeping; this time, however, it was the smirk he used to shoot others when they attempted to test his will. Hamza opened his eyes. But all he could see were blurry figures floundering before his eyes—wildly swinging figures, higher and lower, lower and higher, right to left, and left to right. Shortly afterwards, the figures calmed down, and the image settled. Hamza could make out some unfamiliar people around him. He focused his eyes and attempted to take a close look: masked surgeons were encircling him, and on both sides, he could see needles, surgical blades, scalpels, handles, and some scattered tablets. He knew this was a surgery room, but he still needed to ask what kind of room it was and who these people were who stood before him, curious gazes in their eyes. Hamza attempted to ask, but scarcely had his lips separated when huge pains swelled through his chest and the back of his head. He knew he had to submit.

  His eyes closed, and he began to remember the last moments he had lived before finding himself in the surgery room. “Right here, c’mon, c’mon! Here, I found another one!” The words resonated in his ears. Hamza, then, amid the clamor, felt himself being heaved from under the rubble, his head hanging limply, and the rubble scratching his dangling hands. The ambulance sirens were disturbing, and he could feel cold air bitterly blow into his face while the hands of those carrying him on each side unconsciously nudged him in the ribs as they rushed to one of the ambulances. Meanwhile, through a gap in the ruins, Hamza saw the little body of Jihad lying serenely, his burned hand extended motionlessly on his tattered book.

  Spared

  by Rawan Yaghi

  The electricity was out. There was no studying to do and we were bored of staying at home. My neighbors and my friends went out for a football match. I wasn’t allowed out, because my mother was preparing lunch and it was almost done. I stood on the balcony, watching my friends kicking the ball to each other and acting like famous football players when they scored a goal, spreading their arms like eagles and running around screaming, “Goooooaaaal!”

  I stood there, cheering whenever my best friend, Ahmed, scored. Lunch seemed to take forever! I looked back. Mom was putting plates on the table. She looked at me and smiled serenely. She knew how much I wanted to go out and that I was staying because she made me.

  “Come on, Mom! Hurry! Ahmed is scoring all the goals,” I complained.

  “Almost done, dear. You won’t be able to play on an empty stomach, will you?” she said sweetly. I gave her a grumpy face and went back to watching the huge match. I rested my chin on the edge of the balcony, pulled my arms back, and kept my feet on the small, blue, plastic stool which my mother bought exactly for that purpose. She said I didn’t need more than ten centimeters to be able to view the street. Anything higher than that would cause a tragedy that no one in the family or the neighborhood, especially me, wanted to see. She terrified me with stories about children who climbed the balcony and ended up in the street with al
l sorts of broken bones. My little mind, of course, believed every single word she said, and I was always cautious not to dangle my head and arms when I climbed the balcony on the precious little stool. Ahmed, who seized a lull in the match, looked up at me and gestured a question. I shook my head and yelled, “Not yet!” The kids laughed at me and went back to their ball.

  In a second, a huge light flashed right in front of me, and I was thrown back to the wall of the kitchen and then to its floor. Bricks hit the ground and smashed glass followed seconds later. My knees and hands were shaking, and I couldn’t stand up for a moment. There was a strange noise in my ears that sounded like a very annoying, nonstop whistle. Smoke was suffocating me. My mom ran to me, crying hysterically. She checked every part of my body to make sure I wasn’t hurt. Then she hugged me. But I did not care; I wanted to see what happened to my friends. She immediately pulled herself up and carried me out of the house, because smoke kept rushing in. My hands were shaking, and my mind couldn’t let go of the fact that all of my friends were playing in the street seconds ago. In a minute, my mother and I were standing in the middle of the street, trying to breathe some oxygen, but all we were doing was gulping cement-filled air and coughing it back.

  As the smoke faded away, we could finally breathe air that smelled like fireworks. Then my mother realized we were standing in the spot where the game was taking place. She didn’t know where to go. She kept walking in circles while holding my head above her shoulder, close to her neck. I saw my friends lying on the ground. All of them. Ahmed was thrown on top of his cousin. His head was torn open. Aunt Um Ahmed saw him as well from the front of her house and started screaming. My mother was still hugging me as hard as her scratched arms could. Um Ahmed rushed to the street, screaming, carried her son, and hurried for any of the ambulances whose sirens were wailing in the distance. She couldn’t get further than a few meters. She collapsed to the ground, still crying, still holding her son, and then she fainted. Ahmed’s dad rushed after her. He carried Ahmed and started running. He too couldn’t go on. He fell down. By then I was weeping hysterically, along with my mother, who kept carrying me and pulling my head back. She did not want me to get closer to my friends. She wanted to cover my eyes from all of the flesh scattered here and there.

  The neighbors carried Ahmed and rushed with his dangling body to an ambulance. They took his mother to one of the neighbors’ houses. Uncle Abu Ahmed stood in the middle of the street while people were collecting rubble and evacuating the injured. He stood there, staring at Ahmed’s blood and brain on the cement. My father and others tried to pull him away, but he kept resisting them. Later I had to be rushed to the hospital too, as it turned out I was injured.

  Ahmed was gone. The others haunted me with their blaming looks every day I went to school. I couldn’t look at them. Amputated limbs. Scarred faces. Limping gaits. Our neighborhood was blown to smithereens in a split second. No more games were played. No more goals. No more cheering. And my friends grew up in one second. They no longer looked at me the same way they used to before that awful day. They wouldn’t come out to play. And they had a distant look, like Uncle Abu Ahmed when he looked at me, like I didn’t understand, like they knew something I did not know, like I did something wrong.

  Canary

  by Nour Al-Sousi

  The sun was overhead. The weather was blistering hot.

  He sat on a wooden bench in the middle of a park, like a stranger who got lost at an airport. He counted the lines of his palms as if he noticed them for the first time. He seemed like someone who just woke up and tried to make sense of the surroundings. He scanned the park nervously. He watched a small flight of birds, but soon lost interest as he could not identify their species. He watched a child who, trying to impress his mother, acted like a famous soccer player skillfully dribbling a ball. He smiled. He was in a similar situation before. It felt like déjà vu. He used to beg his mom to take him out with her and even tried to carry heavy things, just to show her he was old enough to lift some of the UN supplies she and his brother Ghassan brought home. She looked behind her and grinned, the smile shrinking the wrinkles of the misery inscribed on her face. In a last desperate attempt, he clutched at the hem of her gown.

  “I want to go with you,” he insisted, suppressing a sob. “I want to go like Ghassan.”

  “Mom, he is old enough to carry. He carried two of the three chairs yesterday,” argued Ghassan in support of his younger brother.

  “Okay, maybe you can go next time. You stay at home today,” replied his mother.

  Two tears dropped from his eyes as he saw them leave. He then decided to wait outside and tried to convince himself that it was the right thing to do. Someone had to stay home, after all. His mother’s promise gave him hope, and Ghassan’s support raised his morale. At last, his older brother believed in him.

  His mother returned home around noon, carrying a white flour bag with blue stripes. Ghassan would follow proudly, struggling with two plastic bags whose contents would sustain them for weeks to come. He ran to them and gestured to Ghassan to let him carry the two bags. Ghassan, however, offered him only one, the lighter of the two; he did not want his brother to fail his first test carrying the bags. He carried the bag with his left hand, then with his right one, then with the left hand again. When his hands got tired, he hugged it hard. He did not want to let go; he did not want to let his brother down.

  She stood gazing at him from afar, examining his facial expressions and gestures that, to her disappointment, looked strange yet familiar; she could not locate them inside her mind. Her eyes unblinkingly fixed on him. She roamed the park, forming a circle with him at the center. She thought it would help her dig deep into her mind if she examined him from three dimensions. She failed. As she stood in front of him, a kid jumped in front of her, playing in front of his proud mother, showing off his soccer skills. She shook her head. She was in a similar situation, so similar that it felt like déjà vu. She was a little kid in her cold house trying to please her mother and begging her to stay. She felt so lonely and so cold. Her only solace was the many dolls and teddy bears she had in her bedroom. They were her world, and her hope. Her mother would leave the house to return back around dawn, carried by a new boyfriend.

  The sun was overhead. The weather was stifling.

  He laid his head back against the bench, checked his watch, and closed his eyes to relieve them from the sweltering heat. He collected his saliva and swallowed it in an attempt to fight a sudden surge of thirst. Then, when he decided to think of something refreshing, her golden hair caught his attention. She was short and the army uniform made her look even shorter. She was gorgeous—that he could not deny. He watched her circling the park. He thought to himself, “Maybe she is from Bologna. Would I be able to like her if she were a tourist?” Then he lost interest. The noise of the traffic and people around him invaded his thoughts, bringing a memory of a similar noise. He was running with his brother to the UNRWA water truck to bring fresh water. The camp did not have fresh water for days. They queued for an hour or so, filled up two jerry cans, lifted them on their shoulders, and staggered on their way back home at the edge of the camp. Attracted by the sound of a bird, he put down the jerry can and wanted to chase it, a hobby they pursued whenever their mother was away from home.

  “It’s a canary!” yelled Ghassan. “I saw it first,” he said. “I can get it for you if you wait here,” Ghassan said. The canary flew into the bushes of the outskirts of the nearby Jewish settlement. It took only one gunshot. His brother and the canary were silenced forever, in front of his eyes.

  She observed how he, eyes still closed, relaxed on the bench apparently unconcerned by anyone. She wondered what he was thinking of amidst this noise. She wondered if he was on a date. Struck by the glare of the sun, she decided to circle the park around him once more. She looked at him one more time when she was stuck by a piercing flash of a Star of David dangling from a chain around his neck. She looked away and close
d her eyes very hard to get rid of the momentary blindness that took her by surprise. She felt her brain had evaporated by the heat, driving her insane. She wished he had been waiting for her. And just when she felt desperate, something inside her made her love this state of hallucination. She sped towards a nearby tree to spare herself the flaming air around her. She decided to think of something refreshing. She closed her eyes and imagined him relaxing in a tub of cold water, with it dripping from his hair, nose, and ears. His face was distracting her. He had on his face things she had been looking for. What they were, she did not know. She felt she had to reach out to him, to occupy his world. She remembered when she last had a boyfriend. That was long ago, she thought. That was a little before she was recruited in the army. It was not easy for both of them to stay together having to serve in totally different places. He could have tried harder, she thought.

  The sun was overhead, the air bearing down.

  Sweat tiptoed down his forehead to his temples. He lifted his left hand to wipe it away. He opened his eyes and looked around. To his relief, the mother and her son were finally gone and more soldiers were gathering for the lunch break at the usual place. So far, everything was going as planned. The belt was stifling him, and his hands were damp. The sweat was pouring from him, but he needed to focus and see clearly. He dried his hands, wiped the sweat off his forehead, checked the timer in his right pocket, readjusted his heavy jacket and drew it closer to his body as if winter came abruptly. He checked the time again; it was almost 1:10 p.m.

  She opened her eyes and seeing him about to stand, decided to act on impulse and go talk to him. It was her last chance. She lost many people because she was not daring enough; not this time, she thought. She walked toward him.

  As he raised his head to examine the area one last time, his worst fears materialized in front of him. The short blonde in khakis and black army boots, gun strapped on her back, ponytail dancing behind her, was darting through the tables towards him. He stood, sweating even more, paralyzed with surprise. He could barely move his hand into his pocket to clutch at the trigger.