Part 9
The fire department never came. It was the rain that did. Our salvation was here, albeit a bit late but-
No.
It arrived like it was decreed to do so, divinely, and I was not about to sit here on the sidewalk lamenting all the ways my lord abandoned me when my nafs knows that’s not true. When my eyes themselves bore witness to the stage crashing down on the tyrant, missing the girl by a split second and silencing his taunts with a rain of debris.
I watched the black smoke be put out by the world’s largest fire hydrant. I marvelled at the strong integrity of the building revealing itself in the overhead sun, finally apparent with the disappearing smog. The overhead sun stared straight down at this mess, bright but not brighter than the flares lit by the soldiers in the small hours of black before it rose, not brighter than the white phosphorus the rascal children of Gaza mistook for celebratory fireworks in October.
As rain seeped into the building, spraying sideways into the windows of the vacant floors I remembered my camera, long forgotten and left on the chair. The rain will probably destroy the internal battery, I thought to myself; in no rush at all to retrieve it.
After the dust dispersed, a few actual ambulances arrived. Farouq and I went to follow them into the building as we were the only ones still at the scene. Everyone still alive went to accompany the injured in transferring them to the European hospital in Khan Younis with the nearest surviving hospital, a field hospital that was already exceeding its maximum capacity, caring or rather; doing its best to care for the patients displaced from the largest healthcare centre. And now they had even more coming their way. I hope they get the care they need, and aren’t shunned by the overburdened doctors. Luckily enough they were going there with four, including the American Volunteer.
2 men with longing looks of bloodlust in their eyes or rather the aftermath of it dragged away Mouin, a friend I hadn’t made yet but who lived opposite to me in the small tents they had allotted for press and civilians. Or at least the civilians they deemed civilian. Although he wasn’t being treated with the dignity of one now as they dragged him by Grey toes while the hands carrying him, the fingers that had committed a 1000 atrocities were protected with firm gloves.
Again, I thought about the irony of the help we needed back then arriving now, when all that was left to show for the horrific massacre that occurred in this room were the charred bodies of the shaheeds and of course, their clothes. The fact that most of them were the bodies of the IDF soldiers brought me little peace. That fact alone could be reason enough for them to twist the narrative. I could see the headlines in bold now as I neared the stage, leaving Farouq who searched the disintegrated supplies closet, stepping over the door that was blown off its hinges to find something to cover up his mass produced inmate jumpsuit from the damp chilly air.
“IDF soldiers killed in blaze while fighting a hotbed of terrorism”
It occured to me that I should have offered him my vest. I shrugged off the awkwardness.
The bodies were being wheeled out like a crew taking down props after some sick production. Routinely and as orderly as grief stricken survivors could ask for from stingy humanitarian organisations. A stretcher shoved past me and my face crumbled at the small, grey arm stuck out from under pale white coverings, princess pink tulle spilling over the edge of the cot,
I hope she will be the happiest ballerina in heaven.
Engines started up and revved away carrying more than their allowance of weight inside them in the form of corpses and in the form of mothers clinging to them. The awful part was that the bodies inside those trucks weren’t limited to the army and civilians executed in this room. Those ambulances outside and those box trucks included some, but not all of the people shot dead in the street, targeted by snipers skilled for the kill or quadcopters that shoot at anything that moves.
Farouq came back behind me while I made a round of the room, looking for my camera. I then hopped onto the thin, elevated strip of wall lining the perimeter of the floor, peering outside the hole on the left of the stage, where I first looked in to see Mr.Nasser tortured, wondering if maybe they threw it outside when Farouq comes up behind me, tapping my shoulder.
He hands me the unscathed hunk of metal and I felt like chucking it out the window where I thought it was. ‘Where did you find it?’
He points to the foldable metal chair, one of the only four intact in the room, beside a crushed one splattered with blood slowly thinning into the pouring water. A torn piece of sparkly bodice was caught on the piece of the ceiling that crushed it, and the little girl sitting on it.
Sombre stoicism festered into a boiling, blinding anger at the unfairness of it all . How was it that this camera, this insentient cube of metal and glass that only ever served as a testament to everything tha was wrong with the world– survived,unscathed, while a human child—innocent and full of life left to live—lay crushed beneath rubble. I somehow survived through all of this and get to have this piece of machinery, this.. This thing in my hand while her father returns to his nonexistent home without his daughter, his bloodline, in his arms?
I dropped the camera down with its overly swung strap. Its metallic surface decorated with beads of water haunted me with its untouched perfection. Like I guessed however, the battery was almost dead, so there’s that.
I walked with Farouq to the stage where he sat, too weak to stand, legs dangling from it, over a wet pile of clothes, besides another wet pile of clothes, in front of another wet pile of clothes and examining a string of gold between us. Ahed’s necklace. A testament to the life she led before it took her place in being killed by the israelis. I stuffed it inside in the pocket of my useless utility belt that carried no tools or food, just sand from being kicked around everywhere.
Meagre but saturated sun exposed some of the brown of the stage, some of the memories.
I swung an aching heel over the high structure and stuck my elbow into the loose plank to bring me up. I kicked away dust bunnies with congealed blood clung to them and made sure to tread carefully around the clothes like they were precious butterfly wings thumb tacked to the platform, for seemingly no reason other than to preserve what was left of those people for the time being, before the pieces of them we’re fed into an industrial sewing machine to make pyjamas for kids who could sleep without the sounds of warplanes threatening to split their heads, and their homes apart… Farouq sat, defeated, breathing into his clasped hands with prayer or silent anguish.
He took a deep breath which is when I looked down at him and asked ‘did they do this kind of thing in the desert?’
‘Laa, in the desert our dead bodies are rolled towards fridges or furnaces, and our parents do not have to carry us to either of those.’
My face changed at his idea of mercy, he was sickly from the outside, but I wasn’t able to see how sickly they must have turned him from the inside. I couldn’t stand anymore, I sank to the ground and hugged a padded knee to my chest, bullets of sweat beginning to bloom on my temple and listened.
‘The fortunate ones are returned to their families, albeit in pieces and the rest live out their sentence as spirits in cyro cells.’ he expressed indifferently, his wording almost poetic, in Arabic.
‘--and the remaining pieces?’ I asked, so desperately wanting to be surprised by the surely despicable answer.
He traced the jagged edge of what I perceived as the greater israel border onto the film of dust and rubble. After all that map was plastered in all of our childhood homes, however temporary they were before we swam between and outside borders in the camps of neighbouring countries, awaiting the next ambush so we could slip between the cracks to return home; home to “Falestina” in bright red on posters yellowed by age, placed on the walls to preserve any last bits of patriotic sentiment in children who were beginning to manifest Ben Gurion’s famous phrase–“The old will die and the young will forget.”
We will never forget this. And I will never forget the look on Farouq’s face as he wiped emotion off his face, features hardened by ungodly sights and said,
‘our organs are placed inside dying children who will grow up to pretend as if we don’t exist.’ I looked around the stadium, devoid of bodies proving that yes, and they will stop at nothing to make sure we don’t.
‘But verily our blood flows in their veins’ he said, a powerful statement emitted from a weakened soul.
And now our blood flows in the cracks of this stage, I thought passively, eyes locked on the arch of blood drawn from killing off people one by one in those positions. Clothes were strewn all over, littering the stage with bitter reminders.
I mustered up enough strength to look at the videos, just to check if they were taken off or if someone had caught wind of my scheme and switched it off. I switched it on with the bar in the corner glowing orange, threatening to black out any minute, I skimmed through the openings of the oldest videos and pictures, passing by the group photo we took minutes before disaster followed by a darkened shot capturing the back of the first victims feet and how he fell to them upon his death, all on tape. I couldn’t bear to sift through the evidence today like I did every night before today, mindlessly turning off my emotions to get the job done. I forgot what I was doing this for entirely.
My finger clicked past a flash of pink, I hit the back button, seeing the previous video. It was Hoda the girl crushed instead of this infernal device. She must have been sitting next to it while it was recording. The girl came in front of the camera lens, the flash of pink– and held it up to her face. She was smiling, I saw as I started crying, looking at the toothy grin and the faces she experimented with, winking as she said softly, playful in the most perilous situation.
‘Bye bye camera, raḥ arūḥ anām. raḥ alʿab maʿik lamma aṣḥa.’
(bye bye camera. i’m going to take a nap now. i will play with you when i wake up)
The camera switched off, leaving me yearning for more words from that pretty smile, stolen by her fate.
It was the loss of my cell phone that revealed the indigestible truth of this whole affair– the fact that things remained the same with or without my reposts of the bleak Gaza horizon, a skyline of everything we built from the ground up crumbled. Some journalists died to get the footage they required only for it to get thrown to the dogs who misconstrue everything it means to be a Palestinian living in this insufferable, volatile climate.
My lungs started to fill with smog that was no longer there.
I unbuckled my utility belt and caught my breath on the edge of the stage where the same rays of sun that shone on Adnan’s face migrated and now illuminated his blue scrubs green, as they lay on the ground- basking and inflating in the coming warmth.
The sun didn’t seem to care how devastated we were, it continued to rise day in and day out; setting at the same time, signalling to everyone else around the world that their work had ended while mine had just begun, because the horrors I witnessed in the secrecy of night proved different that the ones committed in the day. And that was the rule of my life until today; where it was proved to me here that they could commit crimes just as severe in the broad daylight… with the entire world’s eyes on them.
My thoughts were interrupted by the crackled sounds of crying emanating from outside the university building. I immediately hopped from the stadium, ignoring the wooziness that hit me afterwards as I ran.
The one thing I can do is run, I said critically to myself– reminiscing about jogging across paddy fields when I was a trackstar in high school.
And all that running for what, so I could dash out of predicaments I was better off dying in? I went over my tapestry of dark thoughts with a rosy paint roller, remembering Mohanned with every remotely resigned thing I pondered. Instead I analysed where that sound was coming from, the voices sounded familiar but– how could that be? They were all at the hospital right now weren’t they? Despite everything, despite my despondent state of body and mind, urgency coursed through my veins again as I jumped over some chicken wire to a street where a baqala stood at the very end, beside the dishonoured masjid.
I went into the miraculously intact front door, ringing the chime that hung above it to see a large group of mostly women, a few men, and even less children huddled around 3 coffee tables craning their necks up to the tv held still by a worker boy propped up on a dinghy ladder angling the router just right with the end of a broomstick handle.
I settled myself between two guys with their eyes locked onto the screen and craned my neck up to see the news as well where I saw–Karim, like I had never seen before looking bashed all around but clean in a spring green shirt moving his hands around explaining the crash! The boom! The way the room shook with the might of Allah before persecuting the soldiers whom he explained, had been spying on them before coming in and forcing everyone “to become like babies'', ‘Khalluna nseer zay il-babyat’, his way of telling the world that they forced us to take off our clothes. His own kiddish way with a lisp, yet clearer than I ever could convey. He carried much of the interview with the camera switching to Hashim who now wore a cast that went up till his hip showing that the limp we saw earlier was far worse than we thought and was sustained by what he revealed was a bullet to the spine. Everyone was laying everything bare, un-afraid and un-affected by what the israelis might say or do, because they had already subjected us to the worst.
A bright red bar transported words from the left to the right of the screen, and from the right to left again, in Arabic this time. This was an international broadcast.
‘23 Palestinians taken hostage by israeli defence forces in abandoned university hall’
A female voice, ethnically persian or african took the mic and spoke with journalist trained, polished words–
‘An American designed GBU-39 bomb targeted the Al-Quds open university, opening fire on israeli militants stationed in the area where Gazans fleeing from Rafah took shelter at 10:22 am’
‘Witnesses say members of the idf forced them to strip naked on the graduation stage, proceeding to torture them with whips and weaponry even throwing blades at them before killing 10- almost 11 people with the narrow escape of Ahed Tariqi.’
An image of everyone entering the hospital with Ahed sitting in the waiting room with those same cuffs sliding down her calves flashed on screen. The report went into more of the details of what we saw, of what I recorded. Myself and everyone in the room kept counting on an interruption from the israeli media office to pop up on screen, saying that the whole thing was a “horrific mistake” or a “targeted assault on terrorists” or whatever crap they kept coming out with to make the world believe them this long.
But their lies were unfurling in front of them in a web of their own doing. I set the camera down, relieved of my immediate responsibility to get these clips to a proper publication. Of course I would have to get these somewhere and I would, there was still a long way left to go and a long lineage of lies left to debunk but again, for now at least, I didn’t have to worry about reliving it until a later date.
life is coming, I silently murmured to myself remembering Saleem’s words.
As the crowd around me conversed with one another, something was happening in my head. The frayed ropes of my memory were reaching for each other, bursting with ink upon connection. I remained sitting while everyone got up, finally being able to recall the rest of the poem, which I only realised in this moment, was what Mr.Nasser was alluding to as he spoke his last words, a sonnet.
“Knives might eat what remains of my ribs, machines might smash what remains of stones,
but life is coming, for that is its way, creating life even for us.”
The men of the shop, along with Farouq who sat in the corner unbeknownst to me, chewing slowly on a rock hard disc of Taboon, all got up from their seats and made their way to the Masjid. I followed after, looking at the only working clock in the shop and remembering the time for Salah.
When we got there of course, the place was a sty. A religious centre of purity and serenity was ran through with the muddy hooves of those heya-
I bit my tongue, not wanting to invalidate my ablution for the Friday prayer, the prayer we ended up conducting in the swept clean (of cars that is) parking lot. The agreed upon Imam, a man with silvery hair and a beard that extended past his jawline, dusted off his jubbah unfortunately torn at his mid calf and said concisely yet powerfully,
‘Straighten your rows, let’s pray.’
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