One Small Miracle In Gaza

Past

My eyes open to a dream. There are soft lights above me, bright and circular and I shut my eyes tight again.

I hear voices but they sound faraway, like they are coming through a tunnel. I wonder if I am in the afterlife. I wonder if this could be paradise.

But when I turn my head pain shoots through it and I cry out.

There is movement to my left. I cry out again, a tiny guttural sound.

Then a woman comes to my side, and I can feel her hand on my arm, and her kind eyes come into focus. "Water..." I say. My throat is parched.

She turns away and in a minute is back, lifting a cup to my lips. Someone is next to her suddenly, a big black camera hiding their face. The water tastes like heaven. Maybe I am in heaven. Maybe...

But just then I hear Mother. "Allah protect us. Allah have mercy!"

And she is next to me, bending down over me and kissing my hand.

Then it all comes back.

I try to sit up. I can't. Pain through my entire ribcage. "Yasser," I say. "Where is Yasser?"

Mother lets out a wail which sinks my heart straight to my stomach. The room spins and I shut my eyes again.

...

Days later, I am still in Al Shifa. There are balloons in my room and I've had plenty of candy pressed into my hands by the men in military uniform who pop their heads in from time to time. They come over sometimes to bump my fists, to tell me how brave I was, to tell me how Allah will reward me, to tell me that Yasser is in Paradise now, and to tell me that we will get our revenge, don't worry about that.

The same man from the schoolyard even comes. He does not yell at me for being in the school, but instead, he reaches out his hand and ruffles my hair. Then he recites a verse:

"Think not of those as dead who are killed in the way of Allah. Nay, they are alive, with their Lord, and they have provision."

But all the while, inside, I am burning. He stares at me a moment as if reading my inner thoughts. I know it is coming - the moment, the moment when everyone will find out, and my guilt will burst into the room like blood splattering from a gunshot wound.

"How did you know your brother was in the school?" he asks. His hand rests on the Qur'an. I take it as an omen, a sign: I should not lie.

But still, I swallow and stare him straight in the eyes.

"I was out looking for him and I heard him scream right after the first blast. He's always where he's not supposed to be."

The man looks at me with a strange knowingness in his eyes. "Alright," he says, nodding his head slowly. "If you say so."

Then he gets up from where he's been sitting, stretching to his full towering height. "You will help avenge this murder," he says. "It is your duty." And I feel a tightening in my chest as if a chain has just been put around it. He knows, I think. And when he nods at me again, I am certain. Tears come to my eyes. How did everything come to this so fast?

The man turns to leave, leaving behind prayer beads on my bed. "Seek mercy from Allah," he says. And my toes curl inward and my fists ball up of their own accord and I have to bite my tongue to keep from crying out for him not to tell my family.

But he doesn't.

And when I tell the others the same story I told him, they shake their heads and sigh, all of them: the neighbors and Khalti Rania and even Mother. They know: Yasser had been trouble since the day he could crawl.

And so, within a day or two the questions die out completely.

But the burning continues. On and on and on, like an endless fire that cannot be squelched.

"The Jews," repeats Mother for the hundredth time, "Curse the Jews." It is like a prayer for her, and she seems to never tire of it.

"Allah will judge the Jews for this," agrees someone, anyone, whoever happens to be in the room at the time. "We will spill their blood till it runs in the streets."

The Jews, I repeat in my head. The Jews killed Yasser.

And the terrible burning inside myself latches onto them and for a moment, I feel relief.