One Small Miracle In Gaza

Past

Fourteen Years Prior

It is the first day of third grade at my new school and Mother is rushing me forward, pulling on my hand while Karim bounces on her hips and snivelly Yasser runs along behind us, howling at the prospect we'll leave him behind.

But we won't. We can't. I am his older sister after all, and every few steps I stop and turn and snap my fingers for him to keep up.

"Hurry for the sake of all that is holy," Mother finally shouts back to Yasser, but it has no effect: he just keeps on whimpering. But when she detaches her hand from mine and raises it high with that piercing look in her eyes, he snivels one last time then darts towards us, to the other side of me so that Mother's heavy hand lands on the side of both of our heads.

For a moment, my ears sting. Yasser is howling again, but I've already grabbed his hand and squeezed it tight and yanked him forward and his next cry is caught in his throat because he knows he has crossed that boundary and now Mother will have no mercy, neither here nor once they return to the sanctifying privacy of our sagging apartment.

I squeeze Yasser's hand again. Maybe this time he'll have enough sense to avoid the beatings which leave him red around the ears and eyes liquid with unspilled tears. "I'll be back later," I whisper in his ear. "Don't be stupid today."

Yasser straightens up and hisses back. "I'm not stupid. You are," and sticks his foot out to trip me, but I am too fast, sidestepping him and grabbing for his ear to twist it.

He again screams, but before Mum's head snaps our direction, I've let go of his ear, grabbed his hand again and shrugged at her, as if to say Yasser, what can be done about him?

She takes my cue, drops my hand again and swats at Yasser, this time causing baby Karim to howl, emitting tears like a pulsating siren.

I walk faster, trying to put distance between them and me, but Yasser tags by me like a dog you can't kick away.

The school is only twenty meters ahead and I can already see the faded reds and greens and blacks of our flag, painted on the wall just inside the courtyard. There: I want to go there. Khali Mossab arranged it, for me to be switched. He didn't say it to my face, but it wasn't hard to figure out: no one knows me here. It will be better.

I walk faster. Finally, I reach the door, Yasser and Karim still both howling at my side. In the previous twenty meters Yasser has attempted to bite my palm in revenge for the ear pull and feigned innocence. That is what I remember best about those few seconds before my very first day of third grade: a neat semi-circle of bite marks below my knuckles and the sickeningly sweet taste of blood as I lifted my palm to my mouth and sucked.

"Stop it or I'll kill you," I say to Yasser, hissing in his ear as I grab onto the inner skin of his elbow and squeeze. Then I give him a little kick in the back, and before Mother can lay her hand on me, I rush through the door of the school without knowing just quite which direction I'm going in, and I don't have time to turn around to hear mum yelling at me because a thin woman in a white head covering puts her hands on both of my shoulders and steers. And I think, finally, I am free.