Mohammad’s grave,
The line of 30 martyrs,
Deir al-Balah Cemetery,
Middle Area, Gaza, Palestine.
December 22, 2023
To Mohammad,
Today, it has been 32 days since the shrapnel from an Israeli artillery shell killed you. Whenever I think that you are now lying down in a hole like a trench, alone, covered with dirt, even though it is the dirt of the Holy Land, my heart twists in pain for you. You and I, Mohammad, know very well what kind of superstitions related to death fill the atmosphere of our city, Gaza. But you are not dead. You are not among the dead, Mohammad, right? You are a martyr, which means you are mortal now and living in a world beyond our awareness and understanding in the presence of Allah.
We, Palestinians and Muslims in general, have been stigmatized as “death lovers” by the West. Yet, it is the contrary. We love to live. We love to build and prosper. We love to have high expectations and hopes for our future. We love to laugh. We, better than anyone else, know how valuable our lives are. We deserve to live.
Mohammad, I do not know how to tell you this, but I have lost communication with our family for the last two and a half days. I am still waiting for any news from them. I hope they will be good ones. The other day, we faced the same problem. The Israeli army keeps hitting the communication towers and destroys the communication cables. For almost five straight days, the communications were lost. I felt so ashamed for not being able to tell you whether they were okay or not.
So now, for almost 60 hours, I have not heard from them, and you know very well how things are in Gaza. In a minute, one can lose an entire neighborhood — actually, it does not take the Israeli army a minute to dismantle the area. It is very wrong how a child, in less than a second, can become fatherless, or motherless, or both. Or how a parent can become childless, or how a human can become familyless. Is that even a word? I do not care if the Oxford dictionary does not have it, for in our bitter reality in Gaza, that word exists. A human Gazan could lose all his blood ties in a single Israeli air strike or by an artillery shell. You get what I am implying here, right, Mohammad?
Germany thinks that standing next to Israel in its frenzied attack on Gaza will somehow erase the blood of the Jews, the Gypsies, the Communists, and the Poles from its hands.
Mohammad, our mum prays for you all the time. Whenever she speaks of you, she asks Allah to forgive you and accept you as a shahid. She says that you filled the house with a lot of stuff. She says they were not in need of so many things, like other people of Gaza are, thanks to you. Then she bursts into tears. Among her sobs, she curses the Israelis and every single scum on this earth who claims to be human and backs Israel the slaughterer. Mohammad, our mum is not like before, nor our dad. Deep in their eyes, something died. I believe this is how all parents look after losing a child.
One would wonder how the leaders of the “free” world could watch the massacre going on in Gaza and stand still. But this “free” world had done its own genocides before. Germany, for instance, thinks that standing next to Israel in its frenzied attack on Gaza will somehow erase the blood of the Jews, the Gypsies, the Communists, and the Poles from its hands.
The situation in Gaza is getting worse, Mohammad. People who have survived this genocide so far do not feel lucky at all — on the contrary, they envy the ones who were killed by Israel. They cannot stand the horror of the bombings and the unstoppable Israeli attacks. People cannot find food, Mohammad. Kids are starving. Pregnant women are losing their babies, and others are giving birth in very primitive conditions. Newborn babies come to the world hearing the thunderous sounds of Israeli bombardment. I have heard that the injured are being discharged from hospitals, the few that still work, due to the lack of enough services and space. They are being sent to their homes, the tents set everywhere in Gaza, only to die later due to some complications. No need to mention people with chronic diseases. They are killed by Israel as well.
By the way, our dad cannot find his medications. He combed a lot of pharmacies but in vain. You used to be the one who brought his medications. You used to be the one who fetches our mum’s needs from the market. You used to help a lot, Mohammad.
Your friend, what was his name? Amer? Samer? The one who lives close to the sea. Oh God, I am sick of my terrible memory, though I don’t have the right to complain after training it to be so selective and waning it not to hold on to almost any memory. Damn it, I still can’t recall the name. Anyway, your friend paid some visits to our mum, and he gifted her a grapefruit from the tree they have in their garden. Do you know what he said, Mohammad? “This used to be Mohammad’s share of our tree, and from now on, it is going to be yours.” His mum says that whenever she walks into his room, she finds him surfing your photos and crying.
In the news, they are talking about another humanitarian ceasefire, just like the one I told you about in a previous letter. But the people of Gaza do not want a temporary one. They want a permanent ceasefire. They say, “What is the point of having a temporary ceasefire only for the Israeli army and its mercenary of Zionists from around the world to continue killing and bombing us after chilling out? Let them kill us now. Let them be done with it.”
Mohammad, the other day in the evening, I was on the shuttle coming back from Fatih and looking out from the window. The soil on the road divider, the place where plants and some trees are normally planted, was turned over and piled up.
“Graves” was what came to my mind. Those are graves.
Then I realized this is Istanbul, not Gaza. They are just preparing the soil for planting beautiful flowers. In Gaza, a genocide is going on. In Gaza, people bury each other in the streets, markets, and yards of what is left of their destroyed houses — and in mass graves.
Mohammad, come and pay me a visit in a dream. Assure me that you are ok. Come smiling, please. Wearing perfume, as usual, and swaying the keys of your motorcycle.
Your eldest sister,
Doaa
