Part 5
Metal chipped at the plaster of the broken wall when a rope with a grappling hook at the end swung over it, immediately followed by the struggling sounds of someone climbing it. Sounds of impending doom. Despite the huffs, a velcro-gloved hand clawed over the edge and he pulled the rest of his body up, his head rising to block the light that gap let in and instead cast the room in a speckled darkness, unsure as ourselves.
A nasal voice echoed in the room.
‘More guns than a street in tel aviv eh?’
A hulky, swollen soldier hooked himself over the half torn down wall that separated everyone inside from their wrath. He was here to bring that wrath to us. He scuttled down the wall like a spider, dragging the curtain down with his gloved fingers. They needed to make a big scene of killing us. He leapt from the grills of the air vent that went nowhere now and jumped with a splintering bang into the singular cart of food the escaped merchant pushed all the way here. Juices of semi-rotten fruit splattered on the rubble and rocks, a warning of what he and his nation could make of us, but wouldn’t.
Because we had doctors, there was Maarouf who literally walked over broken glass to return to his work of saving children after being depleted physically and mentally from a most agonising detention, there were four young resident specialists without trucks, or beds but gauze from Gaza in their banged up kits, we had men who’s masculinity didn’t start or stop at powertrips fueled by destroying families, artists like Roshdi, Saleem and I,who refused to return to their families in body bags, girls who didn’t spend their once peaceful days dreaming away about their futures for them to be snuffed, and most of all children whose dreams we couldn’t bear to see shattered yet again.
Roshdi pulled me to his side by my upper arm and patted my back once. “Stand tall, we are Falasteeni.”
‘..And we fear nothing’ something inside of me replied, an invisible question mark hanging at the end. I straightened the part of my back his hand targeted and levelled my down turned face with theirs, held high in all its twisted, cocky glory.
An image flashed of a bullet piercing a tube through my exposed neck but I shook it out of my mind. I’d like to believe my heart was better than believing the lies of traitors. My instincts told me to hit record on these very lies as I switched from photo to video mode, placing the pad of my thumb over the mic and flash unit to mask the sound of the shutter.
A sense of dauntlessness filled my lungs but was quickly quelled when someone pulled the curtain we had our backs to, open, making us tumble over inside of it as they slipped in to push back the veil before the sound of our crash was heard.
‘What are you doing!’ I demanded of the doctor who stood there breathless. Dread for everyone on the other side replaced the dauntlessness that briefly dwelled in my chest. The doctor didn’t give me an explanation before repeatedly shoving me and Roshdi further backstage to a repository for more of the same stuff we saw in the storage closet and barring the door handles shut with a broom.
‘We won’t make it out of this alive, or save anyone, if we don’t preserve ourselves’ he said, making my head scream with doubts. ‘You know they'll kill the medics and the reporters before any-’
‘Then why did you leave them there?!’ I asked, thinking of the young frontliners shaking there in their scrubs. Both Roshdi and AbdulRazzaq were speechless before he finally said, ‘Ma sima'thum jayyeen…my hearing was taken away from me in the prison, but not my senses.’
(I couldn't hear them coming)
‘Yalla, let’s hide until we can see ourselves in again’ he called, stringing Roshdi along the fire escape into the front of the building. I looked at his movements appalled, shoved him from persuading me and bent to the door back, placing my ear at the door where I could hear the units waltz in musically in an un-uniform sequence of steps. Both men and women filed in, cracking their knuckles and no doubt wearing sculpted smiles while they did it.
AbdulRazzaq kept whispering ‘Yalla!’ behind me till he finally ripped me away from the portal to hell and dragged me outside the exit. Then we went around the building to a sizable window, glass smashed in behind an overturned podium.
I placed my finger tips at the corner edge of the window and flattened the erect hairs on my head so as not to be seen while peeking inside.
The mother at the very front row pulled the cap of her scarf over her eyes, still seated, and there was a silent retaliation in that gesture alone or lack thereof. None of us were required to rise for these bastards, or look them in the eye.
A soldier with an assault rifle far too big for his puny body caught this act of defiance and went towards the woman and her elderly father who wore a terracotta coloured turban and an unwavering determination on his face to protect his nursing daughter.
‘Oy Dover! tireh et ze, this woman thinks her son’s breakfast is more important than her execution.’ He reached a twiny arm for the prayer cloth covering her child’s face and her aurat. Nabhan slammed his hand around the mutaharresh’s wrist. It shook, like the hands of elders do but it didn’t loosen its grip on the dainty wrist. He spoke in broken English the pleas of a broken hearted man.
(look at this)
‘You have already killed my beloved granddaughter, you do not need…her, or the ..baby’ he spoke, hesitating before saying the words that I now know were supposed to be ‘my daughter’ and ‘the boy’ out of fear for these brutes killing them on the spot driven by spite and personal vendettas against the old man.
They seemed to like
1) killing entire family units and leaving one or two people,
2)giving those people no time to grieve before forcing them to relocate and
3)killing boys. Why? Because boys grow into men, and there is nothing the Pharaoh or the nation of pansies these soldiers were borne of fear more than men.
The soldier tsked at the man’s audacity in stopping him from killing an innocent mother and her child then whipped his hand away, kicking him off the chair, making the eyes of the baby doll in his other hand pop to the ground. The soldier's hand reached for the top of the woman’s skull anyways, deliriously desperate to see the fear in her eyes, but there was none. Only a look of depletion was delivered to him as another slightly shorter soldier whom I assumed was this “Dover” character sauntered next to her, seating himself as he held a Swedish pocket knife, which any Dane knew was easily fatal, to the newborn. No tears escaped her eyes as she painfully admitted, hoping to appeal to even an atom of humanity in them.
‘I lost my womb to have this baby…please-’
The soldiers grunted, like her humanity stopped them from having their fun. The one on the right took his hand off her neck with a shake, sliding his knife back into its slot of the tools chamber glinting red in his hand. The younger of the two laid his hand on his army mate’s shoulders and whispered, but not really because nothing these donkeys did was ever shielded by any shame or secrecy, they were always braying in the limelight.
‘The old geezer will die and the whore is a worthless kill, forget them.’
A look of deliverance washed over the elderly man and protective mother, whose relief ran in tears down her shaking body, despite the indignity spat at them from the soldier’s mouth. The pair of Shayateen left them, hoisting each other up onto chairs and began rounding the people up with the help of guns positioned and poked repeatedly into the spines of everyone who already had their hands raised up in surrender.
The men and girls were herded to the steps preceding the stage like cattle. You could feel the hatred rolling off the guard in waves as he sunk his fingernails into the back of Ibrahim’s neck, yanking him indecisively everywhere around the platform like a kitten until they decided centre stage was going to be the set up for their humiliating production.
Three soldiers, two of whom had pushed the old man over and threatened to kill the woman’s son, ganged up on Hashim who stood beside the lectern in front of the window we stole glances from. Amir, unaware of our escape, was crouched behind it- clinging to his humble revolver. The soldiers didn’t pay any mind to breathing noises created by lack of oxygen in the ski mask as they flicked their fingers at Hashim’s forehead and pulled at his earlobe. That’s what these guys were all about. Being childish.
Half of them were children. Children inseminated with hateful ideals and brought up with an almost biological detest for us Palestinians as a race.
Fight or flight was the only thing the children of Palestine knew, daily efforts to survive the aggression made them lose energy to learn and to read and know themselves in classrooms. Or preserve their history in heritage sites, all of which were conveniently reduced to rubble in the war. Meanwhile the only things Israelis learnt in their classrooms had to do with their “superior” lineage, similar to the preachings of the “superior” Aryan race, and their history which, combined with the weapons used to equip their pamper plated infantry were used as ammo against anyone opposed to this mess.
Saleem was one of the first herrings picked from the tightly strung net. He stuck out because of his height and was dragged because of it onto the stage by his shirt-tail. Two officers, both shorter and broader than him, stood at his sides with rifles hitched to their hips as Saleem’s eyes roused over the room. There wasn’t a shred of fear in those eyes, there wasn’t bravery either, there wasn’t anything. Just brown pools swirling in wait. Part of me thought the poet sought to go out as a martyr and that’s why he came here. But that’s not true, nobody wants to die, especially not the man that was brimming with words to say and sayings that inspire. He resisted the violations of the soldiers, who were grabbing at his shirt and ripping it down the middle, leaving the tie to hang around his neck like a noose and hitting him on his back with a kalashnikov. He did not let so much as a groan escape his tightly pursed lips as he was pushed down by a force that sent him to his knees, holding his body up by his arms like an animal.
The one with the horse laugh, which made him more of an animal than any Palestinian ‘pups’ in the room, took his yarmulke off his scalp and flipped it, setting it down in front of the hunched over Al Nasser to mimic a dog bowl. His peers burst with roaring belly laughs and this display or revelation of their own lunacy and cheap tricks, they jabbed each other in the arms with their guns when a chinese officer, somehow having even less of a right to this soil and it’s sweltering sun than her half polish army, stepped forwards and hushed her superiors who watched her step onto the stage judiciously, having clearly taken some offence until she dug through her puffy pockets from which numerous toffees bounced out of and palmed a couple of stolen shekels, tossing them into the hat in front of the crouched man. She spun around to the other soldiers suggestively, not even acknowledging the fact that she had just thrown pennies in front of a highly esteemed man in every regard. That was the epitome of israeli arrogance, they care for nothing apart from money, guns, power and cynicism. Their cynicism knew no bounds.
To them, the Americas and their parasitic pet, the life of an Arab only matters if there’s oil at our feet, and if the reserve was to go dry they would force our heads down in prostration to theirs. Like they were doing now when our tolerance for their sick games ran dry.
‘Achkhim! I feel like playing mhmm.. a game of jeopardy,’ she mused, collecting looks of intrigue and cruel curiosity. A small plum cheeked one from the back of line, shuffling innocent civilians towards the stage, had his hands shackled around a hollowed girl's frail wrists. He pulled the girl protected with nothing from his advances but a thin sweater and unintentionally ripped jeans, and shouted ‘We will jeopardise them!’ as he mimicked the act of pumping his front into her backside, making all his sick comrades laugh uproariously once again. The girl nearly twisted her arm trying to stop their bodies from touching when the donkey pulled her head back by her long brown hair. I shut my eyes, blocking out the depravity of it all knowing that wasn’t an option for the girl who’s tears of shame dripped down her chin behind her curtain of hair.
The female soldier didn’t even flinch at the endangerment of another woman and asked a question after using Saleem as a stool to rest her foot. She ground her boot into Saleem’s bare back and pulled his face up by his hair.
‘Me and my buddies, heard you from the outside- calling yourself a gold medal or some kharra’ she spat, feigning an accent like her “buddies”. She continued spitting,
‘So if you should be truthful, then you will swallow these shekels.’ she tossed a few more in the hat to which the crowd of cynic coin worshipers themselves started whooping in excitement. The short warmonger looked very pleased with herself at having won the approval of her comrades who, in all honesty, didn't look too pleased with the idea of someone of her ethnic background being part of their ranks. In all honesty I don’t know what possessed her to enlist for an army that drags their eyelids sideways in her absence either. Saleem’s eyes, pulled open by the skin of his held scalp darted down to look at the hat actively getting filled by more and more coins, clinking sounds were the only thing heard in the entire room, besides the complete hush of people too afraid to move or protest.
Saleem pushed back against the woman’s foot, shoving it away with his shoulder, which was then struck with a nine tailed whip, drawing shallow, bloody cuts into his upper arms and the plate of his chest. Saleem, the “sentimental” tortured poet whose eyes glistened with tears at the mention of pain inflicted upon others didn’t even shed a tear when it was happening to him. He just looked into the whippers eyes, rummaging for any shred of remorse or fluctuation in his clobbering. And he found it. The soldier stepped back, swinging the whip behind him and between his legs like a Hyena in the face of a brooding leopard. He coughed and told Saleem to get on with it, eating the coins.
When he didn’t do anything of the sort the two of them started kicking Saleem in his hollowed stomach, steel toed combat boots rang against his ribs and my heart beat against my own, threatening to jump out at hearing the scream he’d held in this long. He spasmed on the stage, breathing hard and bumping his head against the padded knees of the robotically able soldiers in an attempt to hold them from kicking him further. While they kicked his sides with the same thoughtless ferocity each time and pushed him backwards into the curtain that spilled over the stage, they bargained with him to instead strip fully, down to the socks he still had on. When he refused to do either, give up his dignity or bend to their wind and eat coins, the Chinese, feeling the repute she recently gained threatened, held the other man back with her hand and raised her foot in a final blow that knocked him in the jaw,a miss- aim that ended up being more fatal as she squawked in frustration
‘Eat this then dog!’
His bottom teeth smashed into the top row and his head fell back, his body followed. It seemed like his head twisted out of his neck as the back of it hit the wood with an echoing thud. Bone boomed against the floor and I wrung free from Roshdi’s hand, super glued to mine with fearful perspiration. I reached my hand out, my tight lipped mouth tore open to call out to Mr.Nasser, whom I later learned from the doctor holding my body back my body back, was as good as dead.
One thing was made clear in all this, even if they smashed our heads into the ground with a steel anvil, the tips of our nose would never so much as graze the earth, except in prayer, the security of which I wanted to submit to in this moment. All I wanted to do was get on my knees and pray. I can’t, I can’t because I know it would be my last, but I had… so much to feel sorry for, and too many people to pray on behalf of now.
He was dead, or was going to die. Roshdi bit his fist, stifling a cry and whispered Allah yerhamu as he pressed his palpitating heart.
(god have mercy)
Doctor Maarouf told me to breathe deeply through my nose as he held a hand over my open mouth, like I did when Mona was about to scream in the alleyway.
He took his hand off my face once I assured him that I was fine. I asked him if he was sure our Saleem had passed. He nodded saying how he wished it wasn’t so but getting hit in the jaw or the back of the head in that way was like a kill switch for a body. You were either dead or a vegetable. So you were dead both ways and either way we couldn’t go back for his body until-
The execution was over.
My breathing hitched again and I couldn’t stop the tears from coming, I wasn’t going to stand here and watch that. But I couldn’t run away. The kids were inside, Nabhan and Samira were inside, min ajl Allah there was a newborn and its mother inside. What did the baby do to meet death a month after its life had begun? No, those children were due a chance to live normally, to grow as people do, as Palestinians do when they are left to be. I looked at the road behind me and the hill of cement I carried Karim on my shoulders over. The boy had a wandering eye and kept swaying from my back so I held him tightly. I could close my thumb and forefinger around his calf and there would still be room for him to wiggle and slip out. Were these the legs of a 5 year old child?
(for God’s sake)
I thought about his mute self as I turned my head towards the window. I thought of his wasted frame sitting in the corner of the room…rocking..rocking with his lips sealed. I pushed myself off the motorcycle Dr.AbdulRazzaq sat me on. The motorcycle, with the seat caved in from carrying that entire family fell to the ground and I was pushed off the ledge of the window by Amir who shot up to prevent me from blowing his cover. Roshdi caught me and shook my body with tears in his eyes.
‘inta majnoon?!’ he shouted in my face, and I began to cry. I didn’t know what to do at all.
(are you crazy)
‘ma ba'raf shu a'mil..We have to get them out of there, what about the children? we have to get my camera out of there!’
(what do I do?)
The doctor stood to the side, utterly detached but aware. His face changed at the mention of the children as he rubbed his wrists anxiously, scarred from being held in chains for 2 months in captivity.
He looked at me with a helpless expression, which summarised how I felt right now, I felt far too helpless for someone with my voice- my power. The look on his face didn’t match his words of reassurance as he took me into his arm and rubbed my back up and down saying
‘la tiqlaq, Allah ma'na’ he recited as he hugged me.
‘We will get your Camera back.’
(not to worry, Allah is there)
Between sobs I kept choking. ‘We have to, I can’t leave here–fāḍi il-'īdīn! how will the world kn-’
Gunshots
All three of our heads turned to the window where a man in a dirtied yellow shirt but no bottoms fell backwards, like the man I saw on the street near the displacement camp, except the hole was blown through the his head between where his eyes would have been, splattering the bright canvas of his shirt in red. The Doctor’s jaw dropped and I tried pulling away from Roshdi who only held onto the sleeve of my shirt tighter.
‘What a mess,’ One of them expressed, kicking the body- rolling him off the stage like a lump of clay. ‘Clean this up,’ he ordered from his underlings who did as they were told indelicately, pulling the shirt off the dead man’s body and using it to clean the spilled blood.
A heavy chorus of breathing started from both the men slowly accompanied by emergent laughter from around the corner.
A gang of soldiers, 2 identical girls and 3 effeminate men ululating, mocking our customs came around and started throwing rice from a 6 kilo packet they could barely balance in their hands onto me and Roshdi.
‘Mazel Tov!’ The tall brunette applauded, he took the bag from his teammates and came closer, throwing the rice over us as the others followed in a train of dabke. Roshdi sneered at them from over my shoulder and backed away, putting a blockade between us, the doctor and I, and the group of heckling soldiers.
The lanky one came nose to nose with Roshdi and breathed into his face, repulsing Roshdi. The soldier seemed bothered and poured the rest of the packet that could have been cooked into a maqloubeh for everyone in that building on Roshdi’s sandals and my bare feet. Was there anything more callous than that? Those people inside considered dying by the hands of bloodthirsty settlers before starvation hits them a barakat. The pouring continued in silence as Roshdi stood his ground, chest puffed in imitation of their pompousness. He looked down at his own feet buried in sullied rice.
‘Now you have proper shoes like mine! What do we say say to people who-’
Roshdi kicked the rice onto the soldiers feet. I didn’t move, and stood there, stranded in a mountain of rice. The soldier let slip a condescending laugh, turned around, and turned back quickly pulling the front of Roshdi’s shirt peeking out from his torn puffer jacket. The soldier’s forearm muscles popped in trying to pull him up by his shirt because although he was unbelievably tall, he was scrawny. He felt the girl's eyes on him and let go of him slowly instead of going for the bottlecap pin hooked to it. He read the english out slowly,
‘Bo lir'ot et habanot ha'eleh’ he said, calling over the two mirrored girls with his hand.
(come look at this girls)
His tone was absurd as he spoke to the ladies on either side of him.
‘You see this here? This man makes porn, all these la'azazel filmmakers do.’
Roshdi looked appalled as the girls covered their mouths, opened them and started cackling. ‘Is that true commander Ben?’ they said between girlish giggles. The left woman with a tan mark of sunglasses on her face sounded fully American. The Ethiopian to my side was patting down the doctor, incessantly asking him for the details of his release even though he had scored, red bands on his arms to prove it.
If only he knew he was fighting for a promised land his children would never get to live in I thought to myself, remembering the picture of all those men and women disembarking the jet with their children, who may be their last ones.My eyes drifted from the doctor’s discomfort and back to Roshdi who looked slighted by the israeli’s wild claims and obvious hypocrisy as his brow twitched and fist folded.
‘Yes that’s right you know, they bundle their women in blankets like the national treasure and use normal girls like you for their desires.’
That. Plucked a chord in the usually peaceful harp inside me. I ripped his hand away from my friend and dropped it to his side. The face of the hypocrite and womaniser morphed into one of connivance when he reached for something in the bulky cargo pocket of his trousers. My camera, out of its sleeve. I held my hand out for it stupidly anticipating the thief to give it back before the realisation occurred to me.
That camera had hours, possibly even days of damning evidence against the occupation, in fact, if I recall correctly- hadn’t the South African lawyers in the International Court of Justice use the very videos filmed and uploaded by journalists here in Gaza to make their case? Even if nothing came from that venture, the result of which I and many others alike predicted with little faith in the International Court’s pursuit of justice, the treachery of the israeli government was exposed to a lot more people than the pictures and videos we put on social media ever did. For once it reached the people at home, the people who kept their televisions on and the people who controlled the ballots. I thought about Mr. Nasser lying in his cold blood inside,what his last words might be, and how I couldn’t let them go unheard.
Urgency surged through my veins and I grappled with the soldier who kept tossing the camera in the air to his crew. I hesitated when reaching for the sleek bunned girl popped gum and hummed as she pranced around with footage that could end her life, I threw my good mannerisms out the window and snatched it from her uncoordinated fingers.
I exhaled the trapped air in my lungs and rolled my eyes upwards in relief when the spectre towering over me called over the strong African, but before he took the camera away again, I made sure to resume recording. The Ethiopian rushed over with his balled fist to deliver an eye-blackening punch that pushed me to the ground, launching the camera right into his spider-like fingers. I scrambled up with Maarouf and Roshdi supporting me as he walked away with my camera, my life for the past 5 months.
The polluted air invaded my eye, making me press it close with my hand, narrowing my field of vision. I could practically feel the skin on my cheek purple as I rubbed the vein. I accidentally grabbed his shirt, for support but the material tore, releasing him with a little trip forward.
He stumbled forwards and turned around to find me sprawled on the ground with a torn piece of his top his in my hands. The girls chortled at my disconcertion and the leggier woman struck my hand, taking the square material and holding it up with her primped claws.
‘Look Yosef!’ the other girl pointed. His attention turned to me as she narrated
‘He ripped the shirt of our Yosef! Ha-tembel’
‘ken, like that story in bereshit tanakh’ the one waving the torn piece chimed in to her commanders elation,
(the first book-referring to the tale of Joseph in genesis)
‘Akh-shav at ko-le-tet! Correct as always my dear’ snapped the soldier, planting a peck on her cheek. ‘This man means to seek me like potiphor’s wife,’ he added, his tone laden with conceit when he jabbed a cold, metal object, into the nape of my neck. He let my camera fall to my lap, holding it by its string and swiftly snatching it away before I could touch it. Him and the other soldiers slipped back into the building, all the while laughing.
(now you’re getting it)
Every bit of my being was fuming. He compares what he doesn’t know, he was no Yusuf, that man is left of any of the beauty and none of the morals. He was deluded in his dream of bulldozing my home. My home. It’s only fault being that it shined with the same splendour of our prophet, betrayed by the world as he was betrayed by his brothers. I couldn’t go without looking at the jewels of life that roamed around these ruins one last time. I kicked the mud away and went in the opposite direction of their disappearing figures.
Turning the corner once again, I found myself back to standing at the punctured door of the storage closet. I went inside and opened the second door, careful not to let any creak escape from the rusty hinges.. Footsteps loudened behind me as I ducked low, avoiding drawing any attention at all costs, and I was close too until I heard an ear shattering wail of pain from the direction of the stage that commanded my attention.
Bloodshot eyes of a man stripped down to his underwear, bruised blue already on various places stood shaking, with his legs apart- a fortress under threat. He might have been a construction worker or an offloader for trucks judging by all the cuts of a whip it took to make him crack. A young girl of 15 or 16 was handcuffed in the front by his side, she wore a loose head cover that became undone with every jump of fear and men’s clothes. The man, her uncle or brother, collected himself and dug his bare heels into the stage harder, which only made them whip with more and more ferocity until his point was made- their whips of hide and hair-thin barbs would only repeatedly slash his musculature.
Blood pooled around his legs in a nauseating display, but he only looked into the icy eyes of the soldier that shoved over his torturers on both sides to make way from himself, and his jet black instrument of death. Finally something resembling fear took over his expression as his focus darted to the waxy, purple body toppled from the edge of the stage, lying in a crumpled position next to crumpled clothes that were used to mop up his own blood, a bullet hole through his head trickling the last dregs of blood, of life down his spine.
Before he could look back into the eyes of the soldier a gun was aimed at his chest.
A malicious looking militant, whom the girl only spotted when it was too late, licked his lips and struck the man with thunder in the back with a club, making him choke out his blood, pushing him forward to the gun that was fired in a millisecond bringing out a stream of blood from his mouth, his gums were stained red as he clenched his teeth and his hands flew to his chest, clutching his bare chest.
The girl’s hands flew to her face as she escaped the officer’s death grip to her brother's side. Her face twitched in disbelief, switching between the sight of her brother bleeding out on the floor, still groaning from the pain of the blow to his back– and the soldier who stood expressionless, remorseless, tied by the rugged soles of his shoes to the same place despite the recoil of his pistol.
The girl collapsed over his body, crying out softly for her Akhi into his bloodstained chest, begging him not leave her behind here.
Something about her devotion and dare to hold his body while the israelis were actively striking her with leather made me run, thoughtlessly, up the side of the stage while the female soldiers popping gum and cigarettes tripped me when I scrambled up the stairs. I crawled on the termite chewed wood towards Mr. Nasser. The creaking of the floorboard ignited a spark somewhere in his veins, I held my hand to his stomach- trying to get a feel for any pulse of life. His eyeballs moved beneath his eyelids rapidly and the meagre breaths he took became more paced with his lips opening to say something.
‘My boy.. Is that you?’, he said, calling for his son, or so I thought.
‘La, it’s me-’ my voice cracked seeing him struggle to lift his eyelids to look at me. I put his throbbing head in my hand and cradled it towards me. ‘It’s me, Samir.’
He laughed with an alarming, dry rasp. ‘I know’ he smiled, straining, his cheeks lifted as he slowly opened his eyes a watery sliver. “I’m sorry,” I begged, to which he scrunched his face in disapproval.
‘Don’t be sorry, it has been done; not by you.’
I sucked in air, locking eyes with Yusof for a second , who loomed over our perceived privacy as he looked at me sardonically with the ghost of a grin.
‘Look at me not him,” Saleem admonished, the professor's title being stripped away by the likes of someone who probably didn’t even graduate before enlisting to slaughter an entire race. He summoned the last of his strength and pulled me close to his words by the strap of my journalists’ vest.
‘Life is coming’ he whispered.
And as his eyes shut once more but for the final time I felt my faith fading as I doubted those words. Was it coming? How could it come? They snuff the light out of our lamps, they kick the children off the swings and my dreams– my dreams were a distant memory and not who I was anymore. They would surely be there to kill the life at its conception, when it comes, if it comes.
Both men lay beside each other as they took in their final breaths. The girl buried herself in her brother's neck. He took his hand off his chest and stroked the side of her face.
‘Qulha, laqeet ilna bayt fi il-jannah’ he conveyed, seeming the least bit bothered by the fate he shared.
(tell her, I found us a house in heaven)
‘La, la! You must tell her yourself!’ She refused as the lights flickered in her brother’s body.
Both of them seemed rather grateful to return to their creator, and who wouldn't?
The girl wept louder than I, but unlike me tears were the only thing that ceased to form on her face. Whether out of acceptance or pure exhaustion I couldn’t tell through my clouded gaze but she was soon peeled away from her beloved by the arms, manhandling her. Well, as “manly” as they could handle with her kicking and protests.
“Allah raḥ yiḥāsibhum!” she exclaimed, with her fingers pointed towards the sky. “My brother is dead! He was a newlywed!” She pleaded to no avail as the guards tossed her off the stage and watched her scrape against the broken concrete that I later noticed had drawn a scar on her brow bone.
(God will bring them to account)
Once they were done with her, the nefarious pair of enforcers advanced in my direction- hoping to seize me.
I would always wish that was the outcome rather than what really happened instead.
Out of nowhere Roshdi emerges between me, the Dutch speaking soldier, and the French accented machine gun wielder. The eye of the storm. The soldiers looked to each other, deciding the path to destruction they would agree upon before they lunged at Roshdi who stood, unflinching, in front of my pathetic, crumbled frame and Mr. Nasser’s cold, lifeless body that mocked his last words.
“Life was coming” yet people were dying in front of me, and now it was Roshdi’s turn.
They pinned him the to the ground by his hands, a soldier on each side grounding his fingers into the wood with their firsts before a third one, the hulky man that climbed over the wall– made his way towards Roshdi who kicked his legs to slither his upper body further away while he was incapably nailed to the ground. His head flipped back to me, irises contracting and expanding with worry. He said, imperatively
‘Go.’
At once I heeded his warning, scrambling and practically sliding down the small stairs.I got away from the stage, only attracting the divergent attention of a meek looking female soldier with auburn hair that reached her chin. She quickly snapped her bob framed head back to the stage, as did I.
They started the humiliating process of taking the clothes off him too, carrying out their actions sadistically slowly, peeling each layer methodologically off Roshdi’s sweating skin- drawing out the embarrassment as they flung out each article of his clothing for the unwilling crowd to see. All of which were torn from his person, pinned to the ground. First came his mottled grey puffer jacket, deflated from holes impaled by stray shrapnel. Then came his faded shirt that once bloomed with splatters of fluorescent colours, they tossed that aside and started snaking his worn denim trousers off, temporarily lifting their hold on his ankles only to force it down again.
A bullet was shot through the stomach of Roshdi before I could even catch the bolt sinking in the air. They crucified him. He was crucified. Horror unleashed the floodgates of my crying when I curled up under a chair and slammed my hands over my ears, bleeding from all the shots I had heard fired. I kept my hands cupped over them even after the only thing left to see or hear was the smoke emergent from the still hot muzzle as he waved it around menacingly and announced
‘Is there anyone else who wishes to die by this..lovely pistol?’
Most everyone shrunk in fear, hoping that it wouldn’t come to picking one of them to finish off the magazine. But never in a million years did I or anyone else in that room think that someone, a grey complexioned man in deteriorated leather, would actually step up to the stage, surprising even the officer with his death wish. And by the hands of an officer who revelled in orchestrating this occupation that killed so many of us at that; and now he was voluntarily taking steps to join them? I couldn’t process it, any of what was going on– the way he carried himself with the utmost shame until he neared his chosen killer, his eagerness to escape was deluding him into thinking this was the way out.
What if it wasn’t delusion that possessed him ? I thought as I stared at him pressing his chest to the tip of the gun, his hand moving to speed up the process by forcibly snapping the officer's finger on the trigger.
He didn’t achieve his quick death however, the israeli would never allow that as he smacked the disillusioned man’s hand off the metal and jabbed the tip in his chest, forcing him back and burning the skin of his sternum.
‘Strip’ stated the soldier. The man stood there for a second, waiting for the other to put him out of his misery, before realising he’d half to comply with this demand of indecency placed by them.
‘Protocol’, the hulking haqir fake rationalised while the man began to undress.
He dropped his jacket and started taking off trousers he didn’t need to unzip as a small twist made the waistband fall below his skeletal hips.
A laboured groan came from the back of the room. Amir pushed down the podium concealing him for nearly 2 hours with sheer force and desperation. The rest of the troop, growing bored with the killing off of civilians but still taking their time in making the process as diabolical as possible, shot up at his sudden appearance and wielded their firearms, faces glowing with the noor of murderous intent. Amir didn’t even spare them a glance when the only chance of his preservation depended on their sparing of his life. He was at their mercy yet his priorities were focused on the man who continued his undressing, tossing his striped shirt and ring with a clatter on the stage.
‘Mohanned! Inta majnoon?! minshān Allah la ta'mal hīk!!’ thundered Amir with disbelief in his eyes.
(mohanned! are you crazy?! stop it for God’s sake!)
Mohanned said nothing while Amir tried reasoning with him. The soldier said nothing either but yawned, knowing Amir’s attempts were futile and that he had found the fish desperate for death. After everything he tried fell to deaf ears, Amir resorted to the final plea.
‘shū raḥ yqūl Allah?’
(What will Allah say?)
There was a hitch in Mohanned’s even breaths that were slowed to numb the coming pain. He seemed to hesitate, looking back between the mouth of the gun, it’s dark vortex and Amir’s eyes before turning fully to face him and saying
‘God tells you that the game is over, and he says who wants to stay alive may, and who wants to commit suicide, may also.’
The blue backed soldier started fuming at the mention of God I presume, he ordered a female soldier to “take care of” Amir, in Hebrew while Amir himself stood silently knowing that whatever he said beyond this point would make no difference.
A female soldier, the same one with auburn hair, was sleuthing by the fighter this whole time, waiting for the right time to pounce, and she finally got the go to.
Amir, who didn’t understand the language, wasn’t fazed either by the sudden running in his direction, not until the woman flung her hands over his throat and grappled with him constricting his breathing and pulling him to the ground with force that caused the monumental podium to crush Amir’s lower body while she finished the job. She “took care” of his upper body by strangling him with his keffiyeh. Another person was dead.
I gasped without my knowledge, drawing attention from Mohanned to myself. My mind was fixed on the split second death I had just witnessed and what Hashim must be feeling in his heart but I hadn’t tried looking for him, instead looking at Mohanned whose mouth didn’t even drop at the corners, yet his veiny eyeballs shined with tears.
How many more people would it take for them to quench their thirst? The soldier still had his gun aimed for his back and there was no sign of him tiring anytime soon.
My lips moved to say something but no sound came out as I dumbly warbled something, something that wouldn’t make a difference either. But Mohanned saw me, saw me trying to think of something to discourage him– he had a choice after all right? The soldier behind him was more occupied with the glamour of the show we were giving them than the prospect of actually killing him, that’s how it appeared at least– that the suicideality of this man and the choice he would make was what made the game fun. That game was over in Mohanned’s estimation, judging by what he said earlier and what he said to me next, striking me in the heart before the bullet stopped his.
‘And you, don’t think I didn’t watch you take that picture. Pretending all was right and beautiful with the world.’
‘Ya3ni-’ I began trying to speak with a level-headed demeanour when I knew the word crisis was scrawled in bright red on my features.
‘What if there is no more beauty? I feel I have lived a big lie. He cut me off, I didn’t mean to answer him again, only to say ‘Still, we can make it-’ when he caught wind of what I was trying to do.
‘Make what beautiful? This?’ he said, gesturing to Amir who’s torso was mangled under the weight of the podium, eyes still wide open. all too knowing of the hell that our Gaza was grazed into.
I had nothing to say to him as I turned my gaze to the fallen body, his face shrouded by our symbol of resistance as the female soldier let the air drain out of it, and I would never see the chequered blanket the same again.
Mohanned took my silence as permission and raised his arm, giving the officer a clean but damaged slate to bludgeon.
“Suicide will be more beautiful,”
He said that as a bullet ran through his skull, and the tool meant for greatness within it that never ceased to torment him.
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