Missing in the Rubble

It had been days I had not taken a calm breath. Everywhere I looked I only saw rubble. Concrete and broken pieces of walls, with metal shafts protruding out of the hard cement. The scorching sun burning through my skin as I sit on a block with my head covered with my husband’s Keffiyeh, a head covering made of a cotton cloth.

I haven’t seen my husband for days, I have walked endlessly in the past two weeks, because there is no fuel and no working cars. I have not been able to sit even for a moment, every cell in my body restless because of my inability to find my husband, Suleiman. He is about 6 feet tall, and looks very thin lately because the little food he is able to find he gives it to me.

He had told me that he would meet me behind the hospital, where I waited for days, but he didn’t come, and I was asked to find shelter and be in a safe place, I didn’t know what was a more safer place than this hospital.

I heard news of a phosphorus bomb in the far east of the city, so I set out to search for him there, because everyone said there were too many casualties there. I was scared to set foot anywhere, everywhere I went, I heard explosions spearing through my ears, and the ringing in my ears wouldn’t stop. I felt my ears adapting to the glaring sound of bombs. I was afraid I was going to lose my hearing, and the tiny shellings hitting me no matter where I was.

I think, I have become very numb, I should be sad and crying because of the things I witness, the smell of bodies decaying around me. But I dont know. I am afraid that Suleiman may be gone, but I don’t know, I can not let go of this hope, because finding him is the only thing that I can think of right now.

Hugging him and seeing him tell me jokes that are not funny, but I still laugh at them because I enjoy them because of him. I don’t know what my life would be if he is not there in it.

We had a one-bed home, where we had lived for most of our life, with our son who Jamaal was taken away because of one of these bombs. And I am not sure if I have the might to experience Suleiman being taken away from me.

So even though my legs hurt, and my feet are swollen, and every step I take, my feet shiver, I cant find myself to sit down and not look for Sulieman. So I dont know where to go, I searched everywhere within these confines.

This short fictional excerpt is a result of my meditation where I tried to make sense of what was happening in Palestine genocide by Israel. I went with the flow that my subconscious presented to me, which manifested a woman that I followed.

The extent of my imagination only took me so far that I have tried to paint for you, in hope that you could understand and humanize the Palestinians plight and right for existence.