Olive Trees

“Who should we tell?”

The blurry faces were becoming clearer and clearer by the minute.

“I’ve never seen one so young…”

Raina licked her dry lips, and frowned at the faces. Why were they so close to her? She felt her head resting heavily on the hot pavement, little pebbles and uncovered pieces of tarmac digging into her back and legs.

“Who did this? Who? Did you see them?”

She let her head fall to the left and saw her backpack, the bright pink plastic Barbie silhouette now ripped and covered in grime. The fabric had also been torn so that the “Ecosystems in Philistine” package Ms. Janaby had given the class was decorated with patterns of Nike shoes amongst others.

She let her palms rest on the pavement and drew her abdominals in, tightly so that she could sit up. The faces moved back, and the murmuring stopped abruptly, only to be immediately replaced by gasps and a few shrieks.

She would have jumped, if she didn’t feel so dazed, but nonetheless, the noise focused her thoughts. The people were now staring at her in pure shock, realisation and…fear?

“What?” She asked, annoyed at their over dramatic reactions. Whatever had happened, she was fine now, and there was no reason to act so childish.

A woman in a teal suit promptly fainted, and two teenage girls began to cry in unison. Raina was now very irritated. “Stop that will you,” she snapped at the whimpering girls a few feet away from her. They did, at once, but their matching tremulous expressions stayed firmly put.

Nobody paid any attention the collapsed woman, but stared silently at Raina, waiting for something.

She stood up on her wobbly legs and began to brush her velvet pants off gently, but the singed parts stuck out horribly like a sore thumb. Well, she thought, at least mama could use them as bedding for the cat.

“You can tell your people that not much was lost,” she announced to the crowd of frozen people. They didn’t react.

“Shalom,” she said, almost happily.

She began to hum gently, first “London Bridge” then, once she saw a few bodies on her way to the Gaza strip, switched abruptly to “Ring around the Rosie”. Mama wouldn’t be happy at first, but she would thank her after she would realise the soldiers couldn’t hurt us anymore.

She stepped disdainfully over a particularly thick puddle of blood that seemed to have congealed since the bomb went off. She pouted as the smell wafted up to her crinkled nose.

The melted and cooled I.D of a soldier crunched under her small foot delightfully.

She had felt the weight of the world come off her shoulders when the bomb went off at the checkpoint. All the murders, rapes, eye-gouging, missiles, tear gas, ruined homes, and baba, she would never forget what they did to baba"a tiny bit avenged.

She hadn’t expected to live, but she had, and she was going home. Mama wouldn’t cry at nights, rocking back and forth, whispering to the heavens that she couldn’t stand another visit to town to get food for fear of getting killed, or worse, raped. Mahmoud’s stones would be a memory now, distant and forgotten.

Raina didn’t know much about the world, so she didn’t know that killing the monster’s cub only makes the beast angrier.

The olive trees greeted her with open arms, and a rich plentiful embrace.