Gazan Girl

My Name is Rayyan- Chapter One

"Mom?...Mama? Baba?" Idrees, my brother, is yelling out into the distance as the whirr of shotguns drill into our ears. We stand above the grayish rubble, allah knows how many corpses may be beneath us. They're dead, my parents are dead. My soul is departing, I can feel the dread, the abysmal.

My throat is drier than the humidity of the dismal, wretched day with tears as Idrees stands beside me, only 10. I can see my mom's lamented, plumb body through a gap between the shattered stones. My heart feels hollow, like a spear has shot through it. I'm mortified as I stumble upon the semented stones and bricks. I can see her, under the rubble but she's not alive, far from it. Her floral dress is embedded with ravishing flowers but it is nothing like what I am seeing, what I am seeing is not ravishing at all.

I can see that there is a hollow cave of stones beneath us and there was my mother, her emerald eyes boring into mine, lifeless. I search for the motherly  docility and kindness but I find nothing. My navy hijab hangs on my shoulders, it suddenly feels heavier and my body does too, like all the emotions have fallen onto me like a weight.

I yell in arabic, as I begin reciting quran in fear, I can't force my quivering body into staying still. Not even for a moment. Idrees sees it now. I watch his expression fall like the stones of a large office building did. In the distance, I see nothing but corrupted buildings, withering into the ground like melting ice cream. Corpses are the cherry on top.

Blood is flowing out of my mother's chest like a river, waterfall even. I try to reach down into the gap to feel her touch one last time but I can't get to her despite the thiness of my arm. Her face is smothered with dust, even amongst her pupils. and now I see it, her eye is split into two and her left arm is nowhere to be seen. I look deeper into the hole and sob hysterically but now I have no mother to cry to. My mom is dead, right there with her limbs missing and her eyes sliced.

For once there is a breeze, wavering through the subdued sky, tentatively.

I yell out again as tears role down my sallow, pale cheeks. I'm wearing a crimson long sleeved and lengthy dress with my father's keffiyah wrapped around my slender neck, treckles of deep red blood on it. My ribcage strides through the torso area of the dress as the tears richoquet down my face. I scream again, it's pained and hoarse this time like a yell for help.

My brother just has this horrible look on his face, like he's too upset to comprehend. It feels like the world has been crumpled like an A4 piece of paper but no, here we stand with no mother, on the rubble above her very dead corpse. I looked away, I couldn't bare it. I pulled my younger brother into a hug against my chest, it's not comforting enough but it's something. I recited some more quran in my head as I gulped, tensing as I turned to look at my mother's body again. It seems almost as if even my pupils are trembling.

I remember mom telling us in the tent:

"I'll go and try and  get some food from down north, sweetheart."
Her smile was weak all those hours ago, as if she knew that it was dangerous and it was likely to not end well. Father went with her, we cant find him but mother's body has horrified us too much to walk any further in search for our dad.

Our knees were dampened with the gray colors of rubble as we sat, sobbing.