Marjan Akbari
From the series “I write to be the voice of Gaza”
The bubbling sound of the kettle and the fragrance of freshly brewed tea filled the air. My hands were busy preparing dinner, yet my heart was caught in the laughter and playful shouts of the children outside, whose voices each evening slipped in through the kitchen window. I set the plates on the table, lined up the glasses neatly, and gently placed the jug of water in the middle of the cloth. Everything was ordinary; just like every other night.
A little girl’s joyous scream rang out from the alley, and at that very moment, my phone lit up. A new post from the Gaza children’s channel stood before me: “In a brutal Israeli attack on a tent sheltering displaced families, seven children who were waiting in line for water were savagely killed.”
Suddenly, I felt a tightness in my chest. I grabbed a glass of water and brought it to my lips. My trembling finger pressed the play button on the clip. Seven children lay quietly, as if asleep. Their eyes were not weary. Sleep was no longer frightening like the bombs. Perhaps because they knew that tomorrow they would not open their eyes to see the sky collapsing upon them.
One boy’s shirt was blue, a bruised kind of blue, like the sky over Gaza that had long since lost its peace. A man, his hands trembling with fear pouring out of every finger, fastened the buttons of the boy’s shirt one by one. As though with each button, he might breathe life back into him.
My mind leapt to al-‘Attar, where the children had stood in line for water. Children whose thoughts were fixed on only one thing: water! Not war. Not death.
The sudden thud of a ball striking the kitchen window startled me. I opened it wide. The neighborhood children, instead of their nightly laughter and candies, found only scolding glares. Without a word, they drifted silently away from the window.
The father was still arranging his son’s shirt, worried that the tender skin might touch the harsh ground and get scratched; unaware that his son no longer felt anything: No scrape, no thirst after hours of waiting in line.
The water caught in my throat, and I began to cough. The glass slipped from my hand and shattered on the kitchen floor. My eyes froze upon the words of the report.
I could no longer look at the glasses on the table, glistening silently. They seemed ashamed, ashamed of being full, while at that very moment, in Gaza, children’s empty bottles slipped from their hands and fell onto the dust.
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