I cannot stop watching the video of the guy pleading for help under the wreckage as he hears his mum heavily breathe, clutching for air, and begs her not to leave him. “Mum, Mum, Mum,” he keeps saying, begging her to stay alive.
Ya Allah, how can we move on with our lives after this? How am I expected to normally go back to my life as children lose their mothers and brothers lose their sisters? How can we stop crying and live in a world a few kilometers away from destruction and genocide?
The mother and son were rescued from under the debris, both alive and doing well, but the father didn’t make it. Yet, some are not as lucky, and the son might not remain as lucky as death lingers by in every corner of Gaza, and even if they are okay today, they may die tomorrow.
How can we move past this? I don’t feel like I can breathe. My days are spent listening to Palestinian-resistance songs and reading about Palestine, watching videos of the massacres and the previous wars, and I feel distraught, haunted, hand tight.
I want to help; I need to help. My tears won’t save the children from the fallen building, but I need to do something, anything. I need to be somewhere, anywhere but here.
When the 2006 war ended, I was almost nine years old, and I cried every day because I was too scared to lose my mum. I had a friend at school that lost her mum and siblings in the war, and the idea that that could’ve been me killed me.
For months, I cried out of fear and agony, and I would not let mum leave the house without me. I lived through daily terror, and I did not even lose any of my relatives or friends, but the children of Gaza are not as lucky.
I remember once my friend with the dead mum asked me; “do you love to have your mum dead?” to which I misheard and thought she said: “do you live your mother to death?” and I said: of course! But then I understood her question and it left me in horror.
Here I am, in the comfort of my bed, with a high fever, because of the COVID-19 vaccine I was lucky to get. Here I am with a headache not because of the loud sounds of bombings and murder, but because of a luxury that protects me from sickness when the people of Palestine are not even protected from death. Here I am, with both of my parents alive and healthy, while a child is committing suicide in Gaza because he lost all his family.
I know it’s not common to remember events from when we were 3 years old, and I really do not remember anything from my early childhood, except for the recurring nightmares of Israel. I was 3 when the South was liberated, and I can still clearly remember when my dad would take us to Naqoura to see the land we so proudly belong to.
I still remember the feeling of being scared as my dad would get lost on the way back, and we would think we might end up in an Israel-occupied land.
I still remember the recurring dreams of being stuck in a field full of landmines, of Zionists invading my home and us hiding behind the door, of my mum being imprisoned for doing nothing.
As for the 2006 war, my sister and I suffered from PTSD for almost two years; major fear of darkness and being alone, waking up in the middle of the night crying and sleeping next to each other on one small bed, and the piercing anguish of losing my mum. My little cousin, who was 4 at the time, would sometimes sleep over at our place, and she would cry to sleep because she was so scared to close her eyes because she thought “they will come and take off her pupils.”
I don’t remember much from my childhood, but I remember the fear. I remember the trauma of waking up scared of losing a parent, or a sister, or a body part, for a crime we didn’t commit, for a reality we never asked for. They took away our innocence, our childhood, and are still taking away the childhood of Gaza; they are taking away the children of Gaza.
Ya Allah, is there an end to this pain?
“Yet the poor fellows think they are safe! They think that the war is over! Only the dead have seen the end of war.“