Najlaa Ataallh

Translated from Arabic: Evelyn Teo

The children died and the others were displaced. Now you only have two options: (1) schools, or (2) stay in the hospital yard.

You sigh ruefully, “Oh God, I am exhausted to death!”.

You ask yourself, “Am I able to stay in the yard of the hospital? Am I able to see the martyrs being counted in the media like increasing numbers in a race?”

“Am I able to withstand seeing all these body parts that lose their owners, rushed to the hospital? Or, the bodies which death penetrates them but they refuse to surrender and leaves them with unbearable pain due to amputation, paralysis, or disability?”

“Can I bear the number of the martyrs, now at 450 and increasing in an excessive way and wait for the unknown?”

The yard of the hospital is like a morgue that wraps everyone inside with a white coffin and does not bury them, but torture them to the last drop of blood. The hospital yard has 1001 unfinished stories. They were stolen from the roses’ basins before they bloom, and were scattered in every corner awaiting burial. Some were even burned with pain.

“The hospital yard is death, which I do not want for myself”, you say this to yourself while thinking about schools.

“Where do I go?”

“To the schools?”

You scream inside you with all your might, “NO! Impossible! I’d rather die!”

Those tiny spaces kill you slowly. They take from you everything that leaves dignity in your soul. Such gatherings are inhumane. They give spaces that barely can accommodate up to a quarter of the displaced.

Your inside screams once more, “No schools! NO WAY!”.

Safety in schools is an illusion. There is no safe place anywhere in Gaza. They are targeting every neighborhood and every street, invading the depth of more populated areas and target the buildings, trees and people with missiles, explosives, toxic gas. Schools or other places in Gaza are not immune to all of this.

So where should I go?

You hear a sound, it is your phone ringing, the battery is still working, the phone survived and remained in your pocket in spite of your fast running.

The voice on the phone says, “How are you? Where did you go? You say nothing and come to my house now. Do not ever think to go the city center.”

Your inside is still echoing, “There is no safe place, but Heaven’s Gate”.