Angels in disguise

Chapter 1: Skies of a warland

March 5, 2021, grenades and tear gas flood the blood-soaked air of war-ravaged neighborhood of his city; Sheikh Jarah as the dogs run after the Palestinian protestors who had gathered there this smudged morning to protest against the military and settler occupation of Israel which is deep creased into the blood of Palestinians since centuries. He is 9 and he caught himself convulsed in an irrevocable melee, he knows he’d die if he didn’t make a way out,  he tumbles over his knees, the dogs are few inches away from his toes, he gets up before they straddle over his chest and jag their sharp teeth into his neck, his eyes flicks towards an old kerosene lamp twinkling in dark towards his East, his bloodied feet hobble over the rocks stalking the somber light rays, he sees there’s a way out, he runs into the coop and sees dark silhouettes of the hounds flip-flopping over the wall in front of him, the barks of the dogs are becoming more and more feeble, the alley is dark and narrow, he thinks he escaped them but a part of him knew that this is not a fairyland in a Disney movie where a dark alley would end up with a small door jammed in the middle of an ancient wall where you could rattle a magic key into its rusted lock to step in a dumbly fantasized  world with pink skies and cotton candy clouds, red juices and purple candies, people with smiles blushing over their cheeks, red as blood, he knows it’s Palestine, it’s his Holy land with sunken olive trees and wilted smiles, grey skies stinking with smoke and bomb, it’s his piece of heart cut with a glass shard sobbing in voiceless rains, mourning the harsh autumn winds, he knows it’s the hot blood dripping from his chest on the unblemished cold snow he knows it’s his Palestine where Prophets have walked in its euphoric streets warmed with epiphany and elation, it’s his land with whom he has promised liberty and sovereignty,  the land he has sworn to sing singeingly-sweet  lullabies and country songs under its topaz blue sky awash with abstract strokes of purple, blue and grey, riddled with stars and  tarnished crystal white moon, with music blazing slowly from tabla and harmonium, it’s the land he has scribbled lovelorn poems about, on the vintage papers sniffing of coffee and olive oil with a bamboo kalam and black ink, he knows it’s his abandoned by the world, occupied Palestine, and he discerns that there won’t be any balloon and cotton candy sellers at the end of the alley, there would be dogs, horrible and illegitimate, with their mouths wide open, hungry eyes bulging out, dirty spittle dripping down from their tongues lurking out.

He knows he’s unarmed in the lurch but he has ghairat, esteem in his veins and he’d spit at them and pelt the rocks over their heads, older than their existence before they could storm over his body and tear his flesh apart.
The street gets narrower and narrower as he plunge into the old part of East Jerusalem, an huge enclosed city like a massive fort with a few number of doors to get in and out, a Holy land where a full scale war had broken down in 1947 and since then it’s splintered walls, wrecked windows, rusted skeletons of bombed buildings had witnessed  the muffled screaming voices of the women whose necks were strangled with bloody illicit hands and whose mouths were made shut, whose clothes were ripped, whose hair were pulled, whose bodies were etched with the most brutal form of oppression, it’s bombed buildings and abandoned corners had rotted with the stench of the corpses of the boys thrown there beneath debris and rubble, who were shot below the ribs, in necks, knuckles and on the right side of their chests, whose skulls leaking blood and cerebrospinal fluid were broken with axes and  heavy artillery, who’re assaulted, with Swiss knives cutting the veins of their wrists, digging the blades ruthlessly into their abdomens, splintering the brittle flesh of their necks, pressing the cleaver until its sharp edge slaughters their jugular veins, they laugh like prehistoric monsters as the red blood gushes out from their necks, they never butcher their necks before their kicking game because they know it'll make death easier, they think death is in their hands while they pierce the knife into their necks slicing the vein that takes only 5-15 seconds to result in death but did they know Allah lies closer to His beloved people than their own jugular veins? How can these dogs wipe out the transient, unblemished existence of Eternal God residing inside His creatures, how could they murder a soul when a soul is eternal?