last prayer

Dear Allah,

                   I have just survived another day of brute and blood to tell you how things down here, few thousands and hundreds of miles from you are.

                  They are bad. Very, very bad. Ammi always said that from the heavenly abode and from the skies, there is YOU, who’s watching over us and if I’d look above I would find you throwing your kindred gaze at us. But now, when I want to feel the comfort of your gaze, my vision is glared by the smoke and dust which envelopes the city and referred by few uncles as BOMBING! I don’t know what that means. Ammi never told me. These days she doesn’t let me take a look at you. She fears I’d be dead if I came out in the open. I don’t understand. I don’t go to school anymore. I don’t see my teachers, my friends, my school ground. All that I had been seeing is Ammi lamenting inconsolably hugging me to her chest looking at Abba’s photograph on the floor of our house, half of which is rumbled to crisp. When I peek through the crevices of our green-wood-red patched door, I see my neighbors running and wailing. I see few grown up men, moving steadily, dressed in heavy suites, strong boots, their faces hidden behind a strong, almost dark helmet, holding big guns! But I always wondered why THEY were so protected behind their suits and masks when people in front of their gun barrel were almost naked at the doorstep of death, their eyes shrieking for help and mercy, tears welling from their destitute eyes and their head tilted above, to the skies in their last prayers offered to you. I guess they were not loud enough in their prayers. Had they been, I am sure you wouldn’t have let them lie in their pool of blood, immotile while their kids cried over their corpse. In no time, even the bewailing of the kid came  to a standing halt subsequential to the deafening missile. Dead air consumes the surroundings. I presume Ammi feared I would be hurt the same way, if I’d go out and play ball. Lately, she hadn’t sent me for groceries too. She did it herself. But I WASN’T happy, somehow. I was scared too, for her. She wore the same old suit that Abbu had brought her, slipped in the burqa and left, TREMBLING. She hides a lot more than her Kurta behind that black burqa. Her trembling body, her constantly praying lips are invisible. Whilst, she is gone, I stayed home , waiting for Ammi. I tried to console her and convince her into eating something, but she always refused to eat and said, “I am full”. While I know that her plate had been lying unmoved, engulfed in dust for over a week I feel scared. I know I had cried to do homework, to go to school, to help Ammi and asked you for help. But I NEVER wanted this. As far as my eyes can see, they see BLOOD, DESPAIR and MURDER I don’t like this sight. I want to play football with my friends. But, they say they are dead too.

                  I wish I hadn’t forced Ammi to play with me yesterday. I have cursed myself ever since. I should have listened to her and kept quiet and left, when we were hiding behind the wall from those very masked men. I think they had heard us, playing. I think they don’t like us happy. But Ammi always said,” Allah always helps the good and the happy.” But I wonder why you like the masked men MORE, over us.

                 I feel scared of staying home, ALONE. I have let my tears stay put in the depth of my eyes and my screams for my dead mother INAUDIBLE AND QUIET. I am scared they would hear me crying and get to me next. I can’t sleep in the fear of death. I try to feel the love and feel brave by bringing Abbu and Ammi’s picture close to my heart. If that goes in vain, I bow down to you in ‘Sajda’.  I can’t let my eyes blink when death is taking rounds in the city. Lest, my eyes are wide awake, watchful. My heart SINKS IN when I hear a deep-loud booming sound that has vanquished a couple of lives, YET AGAIN.  I feel tired and hungry too. I wish Ammi and Abbu could put me back to sleep. I wish I could wake up to a new and a peaceful morning of old memories. I hate to see the massacre of this very city which has taught me and showed me, NOTHING BUT LOVE.  Despite my mom’s constant warning of not going out in the open, I DARED to come out and look at you in the skies and pray for good. They say you make things RIGHT. Please try to make this MORE THAN JUST RIGHT.

Also, tell Ammi and Abbu that I LOVE THEM and I MISS THEM too.

- a scared gazian kid.

                  Sadly, the mother’s fright had turned into a reality, the very fateful day. These were the last prayers of the boy who had seen the life drain out his parent’s body. He was one of the hundreds dead in the Palestenian region.