A letter from Gaza: The night and I, and this war

The 11th night of this devastating war has ended, but the sun has not risen fully yet; it feels like these heavy nights never end. I no longer love the night, although in the past I used to wait for it fondly; it holds peace for the soul and chitter-chatter with those we love. But now, the darkness of the night is absolute and deep, with no traces of light except from the bombs that Israeli planes drop to determine the target on which the lava of these bombs and concussive missiles will be poured.

I no longer love the night; it fills me with fear and reminds me of my mother’s stories about the terrifying ghoul that walks through the alleys to devour everything alive or moving and is never satisfied. The ghost of this war has so far swallowed 2,810 martyrs*, 60 percent of whom are children and women and the rest, old men. Fear also prevents movement for everyone in their narrow hiding places, be it a home or a new shelter to which they moved against their will.

We even have to hold back our need to urinate so as not to move; children and elderly people will sometimes involuntarily urinate while clothed. On these harsh nights, the extinct dragon you see in horror movies has returned, and now we hear its terrifying roar and see the fire that it spews from its many heads, right and left, as it drags down houses and buildings, 10,000 and more, to level them with the ground.

We eagerly await the sunrise and feel temporary joy because we are alive for a new day. We rush to write letters of reassurance to our loved ones, relatives and friends. We may forget to write to some people, but we are happy when they remember us with a message or a call to make sure we are still alive.

But we are not okay. Yes, we are not okay. Because even after sunrise, we have not overcome the darkness of the previous night and its horrors: planes and battleships from the sea and artillery from the east shedding their lava and attacking those who were deceived by the dawn of day, running out to respond to children crying because they do not understand why their fathers and mothers are not responding to their smallest needs. With time, children stopped making even the smallest of demands, like asking for some chocolate or chips. But people would still go to the bakery to buy some bread or to the neighborhood grocery store, perhaps to get leftover canned goods, rice, or dry grains to feed their hungry children, only to be torn to pieces because the pilot of an Israeli war plane was getting rid of his cargo, tons of explosives raining over their heads, thinking that the loaf of bread he saw from a distance was a missile heading towards his plane or a location inside occupied Palestine.

And what horror we hear in the lies and crazy justifications of war leaders, presidents, defense ministers and other Israelis, Americans, and Europeans, whose hands are stained with the blood of the defenseless people — justifications that the mass killing and genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza is done in the name of defending the Israeli state, that depriving the people of drinking water and starving them by restricting their access to food supplies is a form of defending the state of Israel from Hamas’s missiles.

The darkness of these nights reflects the darkness in the minds and hearts of these criminal leaders who must be tried as war criminals. They have butchered our people and assassinated the dreams of our nights and mornings.

* This letter was written before Israel bombed the Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza, where 471 lives were lost.