One Small Miracle In Gaza

Present

"Don't."

I recognize the voice. But I don't want to. Yasser is grabbing onto me tight and I try to pull my arm away but I can't. I don't want to. I didn't want it to be like this. I wanted to embrace him. I wanted to come crying, bleeding, in pieces, to him. I wanted to beg his forgiveness and for him to see that this, this, I did it for him.

"Nada," a voice says. It is Yasser's voice, pure and simple, and suddenly he transforms before me into that little boy, big eyes terrified as I shut the door.

"Nada, you killed me."

He says it flatly, but as he does, his eyes again flash orange, and the horns seem to grow longer, and his grip tightens and he tugs hard on me and I kick and scream and suddenly I can't breathe. I've been breathing all this time, under this beautiful blue sea, but now suddenly I can't breathe.

"No. Forgive me! I'm sorry!" I choke, but I cannot. Everything is moving too fast and it appears that we are in the middle of a kaleidoscopic movie and my head is about to be wrenched from my chest and I struggle again for air but Yasser is stronger than me and as he pulls he shouts: "No one can forgive you! No one! You hear me? No one!"

This is not the boy Yasser, this is the man Yasser that never was, filled with fourteen years of pent-up rage against me. He will take me down to the pit of hell, I know it.

"Allah forgive me!" I choke. "Save me!"

But Yasser just laughs, and his mouth becomes impossibly wide and I see the horns grow longer and then I am filled with a terrible knowingness, a terrible knowingness, that in front of me, somehow is not Yasser, but Allah.

"No," I choke. "Allah, no. You said the Jews would go to hell for me!"

But he keeps on pulling and pulling, further down we go, until the blue is replaced by red and the mushroom clouds seem like they're exploding right around us and I am suffocating but never drowned, my lungs burning all the while.

"Jesus," I finally choke, using what I know is my last breath. "Save me."

For a moment nothing happens. But I sense Yasser's grip tighten and his eyes bulge.

"She is mine!" he shouts. And the voice is not Yasser's, but something far more monstrous.

"No. She is mine."

I jolt. The voice. It is the same. From the stairway. From the closet.

And then, before Yasser appears a man I have never seen but somehow know.

He lifts his arms so Yasser can see the holes in his wrists. "Take me instead," he says. And a strange light fills Yasser's eyes, a green greedy light, and I want to cry out Stop, stop this! but I cannot choke the words out.

And it is too late anyway. Yasser has already let me go and latched onto the man, and is pulling him downward.

"No!!" I shout, somehow not suffocating anymore.

I reach out my hands but they are too far away. The man gives one look over his shoulders at me, even as Yasser is laughing and pulling him downward.

"I hold..." and he takes a gulp, as if he now is suffocating, "...the keys to death. The Jews cannot take...your sins."

He is being pulled away from me and I thrash, trying to catch up with him, trying to save him.

I manage to reach out my hand to his, offering it. "Take it," I shout. "Take it!"

But he shakes his head. "

And then, just like that, he and Yasser get sucked down, deep into the red explosions, and I am left there floating beneath the surface, somehow OK, somehow able to breathe, and I shiver and look toward the surface, where I can see sunlight streaming in.

I pump my arms upward and my head breaks the surface.

I squint. I am not in an ocean. I am in a bed, in a room, surrounded by machines and...

"Good morning," a voice says in Arabic.

I try to turn my head and feel something thick around my throat. I try to open my mouth, but I can't speak.

"You were injured, but you will recover. Give it a week or two."

I try to speak again, but no words come out.

"Just rest now," says the woman. She is not wearing a headscarf but her Arabic is flawless. I narrow my eyes. I want to ask her where I am.

"You are in Israel, in a hospital. Don't worry we will take care of you," she says.

I let my head fall back onto the pillow. My eyes fill with tears, and then just as quickly, the image of that man, Jesus, and that one final look. As if he knew everything, as if I were something to him.

I shut my eyes again. I try to take a breath but the command does nothing for my chest.

"You are on a breathing machine," says the woman, pointing to a white box in my field of vision.

I nod, and though I want to hate her, I cannot.

Jesus, I think. Forgive me, and I know what I am saying, what I am asking.

And although I don't hear a voice, although I don't see a face, my eyes again fill with tears and Yasser's image comes again, but then, it melts into his.