Friday 20/10/2023

With heavy steps, I am taken to my former sanctuary, to the chambers of memories. The final arrival after every exhausting night spent outside the house, the place of family troubles and gatherings that make a person feel warmth.

My mother's voice from afar says, 'Bring us flour with you.'

We went to the house by car, and before reaching it, about 300 meters away, the car stopped due to the broken roads. When I saw the street, my face paled, and my eyes lost their brightness. The correspondent on the radio was honestly terrifying when he described AL-Shujaia neighborhood as a city of ghosts. The shock overwhelmed our faces and took control over us without prior notice. 

On the way, neighbors' houses were empty, some were flattened due to the bombing, and others seem eroded with time, abandoned, but the truth is these houses were left for people to escape the bombing.

Our house is in front of me now. I saw the upper part of the house empty, and everything on the floor is scattered onto the street due to the explosion. The house's wall is on the ground. There are no doors or windows in the house. My closet was destroyed. My father's balcony with part of the house's roof was destroyed. The explosion got everything. In ten minutes, we entered the house and the area, and I know well the policy of flattening the earth, that everything that is moving will be bombed, and my survival rate is 1%, but I wanted to go home.

My cousin's son was with us. When I looked at him, his face's color changed from fear. I remembered when we were leaving my aunt's house, she said, 'I don't want drinking water I don’t want you to be harmed’ then i remembered that we went out to look for drinking water.

I called my brother so that no one gets harmed looking for drinking water, and we left the area, heading to my aunt's house, with gray faces.