Please feel free to share this with your friends: Tomorrow the alarm clock will ring again and the war will be over “All I remember from the 2012 Israeli aggression are the words of my little sister Assoom, after the ceasefire agreement was reached, “I’ve set the alarm to 9 o’clock. As soon as it rings, the war will be over.” Assoom hates the alarm clock; she snoozes it every morning to sleep an extra five minutes before school. But here it was, the alarm clock, and the thing Assoom most looked forward to was for it to ring, so she could silence it and gain a life to live. This is the fourth war in the past ten years, and Assoom isnt yet twelve. What are you doing now, my love? In a quick call – quick because I cannot tolerate my mom’s insistence on reassuring me by telling me that they are still alive – Assoom tells me, “I am not scared anyway, and it is okay if we felt some fear, people are dying and we arent better than anyone else.” And so you are deprived of your right to fear. What does it mean, to fear, when others are chopped up and strewn along streets, scattered across walls? What does it mean, to fear, when others have lost an arm or a leg or both? How can you fear when your body and family are still intact? And so you are obliged to hide your fear, because it is not fitting in the midst of what is happening, of all the death. And yet, we fear. We feel terror, even. Terror is: when seven-year-old Barhoom needs to be accompanied to the bathroom by other family members, so he can feel safe; when you use earplugs to shut out drones for ten minutes, so you can sleep, until the next blast wakes you; when you keep the windows open so glass shrapnel doesnt hit you; when everyone is huddled around the TV to watch what is happening to them, and the father gives up some of his authority by saying, “smoke here, just don’t stand at the window”. Terror is also: when you prepare your suitcases for evacuation, light enough to run with; when you cook on the kitchen floor in fear of a blast that can shake your home, throwing your pots across rooms such that they can hurt someone; when you cry under the covers so that no one notices; when everyone cries under the covers so that no one notices; when you wake up and sleep fully clothed during the hot summer so you’re not extracted, nearly naked, from under the rubble. Terror is when calm unsettles you, because it always precedes the storm. Also: When you count possibilities as you hear a missile pass over your home: our home, my neighbor, my uncle, my sister, my love, an empty plot of land / thank God. When you run down the stairwell, without any shoes on, and run and run with legs like bamboo punctured and bloody until the echo subsides, and you look around you and find yourself alone; your family having scattered as they ran. You are alone, standing and waiting to meet them, either in front of God or on the sidewalk. Alone and barefoot, running for your life. Terror is when the best meaning of the word “okay” is that you are still alive, and waiting, and waiting. And then, suddenly, you start making concessions: let them bomb the house while we’re not in it; at least we want a warning; a shallow wound but with no amputation; that your home doesnt get completely destroyed, part of it is enough; that you at least take your identifying documents; that none of the children wets himself as we run, you all want to appear strong in front of everybody else; that you find a place to sleep; okay, if you die, that you all die together, that you are not left alone without them. Assoom, my love, tomorrow the alarm clock will ring again and the war will be over, but don’t ask who these empty seats belong to. Written by Mohammed Alshaikh Yousef Translated by Farah Ghniem #Gaza_Under_Attack, #GazaUnderAttack, #PrayForGaza #AJAGaza #Gaza
Posted on: Wed, 23 Jul 2014 06:23:38 +0000
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