One Small Miracle In Gaza

Past

The headmistress is nowhere to be found, and even though I suddenly want to run home and leave Yasser be, leave him to do whatever foolishness he's want to do, I can't back down now. My skin is still crawling, and my heart is still pumping with rage. Is it because he embarrassed us? Is it because of Father?

The school door is wide open. I don't stop to think: I just pull Yasser through it. He is protesting softly now, sniveling and sniffling, but his pathetic rebellion just makes me all the more insistent: he must be punished. He must reap the consequences.

He must learn.

I pull him to the back of the school, where I'd seen the man disappear, and I see a white door, just the tiniest bit ajar. I pull it open and smile, even as Yasser's sniveling grows louder. This looks like the junk closet: old broken chairs, decaying standing on their heads, and cobwebs dusting the top of them. No one has been in here for ages, and it smells like mold.

I shove Yasser inside even as he yelps, then I slam the door behind him even as he reaches out towards me, lunging for the closing door. The man is not around, but my heart is pounding. There's a latch on the outside, for some reason, and I pull it closed just as Yasser lands a hard kick to the bottom of the door.

But it is thick and solid, and all I hear is a howl of pain, perhaps as Yasser grabs for a bloodied toe.

"Yasser," I say.

But he is still blubbering.

Another kick comes. Another howl.

"Yasser. You need to stop acting like a rabid dog." I say. "You need to behave."

There is a scratching from the other side of the door, along with short shallow yelps. He's getting desperate. I smile. Soon he will come to his senses. Soon I'll have scared the devil out of him.

"I'll come back later," I say, and then I turn to go.

At the corner, right as I'm about to turn back to the front of the school, I look back at the door and a twinge of pity fills me. I should get him. I should open the door and let him rain his punches down on me.

But I don't. Yasser has started howling again. And who else will bother to teach him? Mother won't, that's for sure.

I shut my eyes hard and then open them again. In a second I'm out on the other side of the schoolyard and then I run back through the covered courtyard of the main building and then through the open gate.

As my stomach contracts it takes all my focus away from Yasser and concentrates it back on my mother's purse, hidden in her best dress in the back of her makeshift closet.

I sprint towards home