One Small Miracle In Gaza

Past

We're a throng of screaming, chanting kids left to organized chaos for the first time since the summer. It is a different kind of freedom within these four walls - a chance to rebel against something instead of the streets. I remember the glint in my eyes, in my neighbor's. Then I remember the sharp thwack on my back and me curling forward, twisting to get away from the ruler.

"Silence!" yells a woman with an unusually long nose, wearing a black hijab and a stern look.

The boy next to me titters and leans toward me. "Look at her Jew hook nose!" he whispers.

But the rest of the room has fallen silent, and his voice rings out over the crowd.

The woman frowns and taps her ruler against her palm, like a metronome keeping time. Then, exactly on rhythm, she steps forward, grabs for his upper arm, and pulls him forward.

He screams and twinges, but the rest of us stand stock still, our eyes big and the feeling of shared terror emanating from our motionless chests.

"Stop squirming," the woman says, and the ruler hits hard across the boy's back.

He doubles over and then prostrates himself on the floor, his body twitching.

"I said stop," says the woman. And she lifts the ruler again, this time aiming it at his head.

She waits a split second, and in that second, the boy goes absolutely still. She has gained back control.

"Now," she says. "Stand up."

The boy obeys, his eyes on the ruler still lifted above her head.

"Repeat what you said."

We are standing in a row stretching from one end of the covered courtyard to the other, but none of us move.

"I said...you have a big nose."

The ruler thwacks hard against his shoulders. He whimpers.

"And...?"

"And...like a Jew," he whispers the last part, but the rest of us titter.

The woman's gaze sweeps over all of us, and instead of hitting him again, she puts her ruler away, tucking it in the pocket of her long jean dress.

"Jews," the woman begins, pacing back and forth. "Are the vilest of creatures to ever walk the planet. They are pigs, monkeys...worse. They will chase you down, kidnap you, then drink your blood for their Hannukah celebrations."

I do not know what Hannukah is, but it must be something dreadful. We all recoil, although we have been told this before, many times before.

She paces to the right, back toward the cowering boy.

"Jews," she continues. "Must all be killed. Every last one of them. When we kill them, we are serving Allah."

She stops, standing squarely behind the shaking boy, the ruler pressed in her pocket and her pocket pressed up against his back. She clamps onto his shoulders and then swings him around, bending down to eye level with him.

"So never, ever, again compare me to a Jew." She spits on the ground, right at the boy's feet. She then turns him around and pushes him back toward me.

The line of students opens to my right, and I dodge left, letting the boy back into our ranks. Although I don't want to. Although I want to spit him out, spit all of this out. Suddenly, I want to go home. I want to go home very badly.

But the gate behind us has been locked and so after things have calmed down and we have all been made to stand very silently, I follow the line of students after the woman in the black hijab, and into the inner bowels of my new school.