Wednesday 22/11/2023

To Said, Hadil’s husband who used to encroach on the silence of any place with his fast words and thick humor aimed at everyone around him. When we used to go to my aunt’s house before the house was bombed while we were still in it, Said used to amaze us with his constant ability to make big things seem small and unimportant, while hiding his deep knowing and playing the fool. 

He used to dream, at the beginning of the bombardment, that his father had died, and he would wake up crying, wanting to go see him. When he would go home near the Eastern border, he would find his father sitting on his front porch smoking a hookah with a cane by his side. When he would spot Said, he would leave the hookah, and chase Said around saying: “Don’t come back you son of a bitch!”

A call at 2 am call to my sister in hushed tones – she says everyone is asleep and we go back to sleep. In the morning, Said calls in his usual loud voice to tell us that his father and siblings have been murdered at the hands of Zionist Occupation Forces in the Sabra neighborhood of Gaza. 

Said and Hadil fell in love before marriage he says, but she denies it. She says only he loved her. Their marriage is only three months old, and they planned to honeymoon in the Maldives. We used to tell him not to take an afternoon nap so he could afford the trip. 

Some people are doing to each other worse things than the enemy. Merchants have tripled prices and are eating their fellow citizens alive. No food – nothing has entered Gaza. Entire families have been killed. Children with not a single family member left. The injured line the hospitals and the streets. The North of Gaza is completely destroyed, and people lie under rubble. So many homes in the South of Gaza have been destroyed over the heads of their inhabitants, and some people still gather money towards nothing. 

22 November 2023