Sana’a, Friday March 27, 2015
3:00 Am
I cover my head with a blanket, forgetting that it would not turn into a shelter if the walls and ceiling decide it’s time to crumple on our heads. It’s okay to forget that, though, you tend to be forgetful in times of war.
What is it that makes me this scared, now? It is not my first time crammed and paralyzed in this narrow corridor. The very same narrow corridor on which I held my little torch and flipped through my schoolbook pages, studying for the national exams the ministry insisted on running on what was left of the city four years ago. I was not this scared back then, not the shaking walls, the gunshots, or the cannon blasts did scare me back then. Nothing ever sent a shiver down my spine like this.
What is it that terrifies me tonight?
I guess it is the planes.
The whistle the planes make draws closer, comes nearer and closer, it is now too loud you can feel it right above you. It, the plane, is right above you, and you, tiny poor you, are laying helpless here beneath. You close your eye for a second, hoping that you will still have the ability to open your eyes in three more seconds later. You open your eyes again, yet your head is still covered under the blanket and you’re not sure in this darkness if your eyes are still closed or open, you cannot see either ways. The only sense you still have is hearing, since in this darkness you cannot see, and in the corner your limbs grew numb and you cannot feel, it smelled like gunpowder and ash for too long now your nose cannot smell. You can only hear in this situation.
Silence…
The whistle went far, and then even farther, Or… was it I that went away?
I always wondered if I’d hear the sound of my bones crushing, my muscles getting mashed and the blood in my veins leaking. I wondered if I’d feel each and every particle and tissue getting shredded apart or is the Missile that’ll kill you is like the bullet that would go through your head, would be too fast for you to hear?
Silence…
Am I dead? I haven’t heard the whistle, the anti-aircraft weaponry or the sound of a deafening explosion in… say…
Three seconds?
It blows my train of thoughts up, the deafening explosion I have been anticipating tosses me down to earth. I am alive, yet I cannot feel the vibrations on the ground beneath, for I can only hear. I hear the sound of the missile collapsing with the ground, I hear the sound of the explosion colliding with the mountains all around us, and the mirrored echo shaking the walls of our house. The vibrations on our windows make cracks on them that I can hear, as I also hear my heartbeats quickening, My little sister who’s clinging to my leg’s heartbeats quickening, my sleep-pretending brothers heartbeats quickening, and my terrified mother’s heartbeats quickening, too.
What is it that quickens our heartbeats so much this time that was not here last time?
It is the planes. It must be the planes.
I guess.
A door in this corridor of ours takes you right out to the fifth floor’s hall of this building, right across from it is another door that takes you to a corridor identical to ours. I know the family across the hall are crammed in their corridor just like us, I think about them when I hear the terrified cry of one of their four children, or even more… They are many, those neighbors of ours, how are they holding up? I wonder.
What of our other neighbor, the doctor?
Was she able to steady her breaths to calm her little two girls?
Where did the latest explosion come from? Was it north? What neighborhood is in that area? Which of my friends live there?
Is anybody dead?
Is any of them trying to crawl out of the ruins to continue living?
I think about Mahmoud Darwish’s A Memory for Forgetfulness, a book I read recently about the siege of Beirut back in 1982. Was coffee really all what Darwish could think about that night? He’s amazing, that man; How is it possible for one to want coffee, or anything else, under such heavy bombing? How would you crave something when you’re not sure if you’re still alive after each explosion you hear? How addictive can coffee be for it to be able to take your thinking off searching for the life in your limbs into thinking about coffee and nothing but coffee?
I wish I was a coffee addict, or a smoker, or a junkie, or anything that would make too busy suffering from its withdrawal symptoms to be terrified.
Wouldn’t craving cigarettes, or coffee be better than thinking about death?
Thinking too much made me too busy to hear the whistle of the plane, and the explosion caught me off guard this time.
Dear god,
my mother recites Quran verses under her breath, my brother fake snores, and my sister tightens her horrified grip on my leg with every explosion.
I think, and so the explosions catch me off guard, then I think, and I stop thinking on my own then tell myself to anticipate the next explosion for it not to make my heart fall apart, but it does.
My heart falls to my lower limbs, and my feet swell and I feel the pulse in my toes. My heart gets up, pulls itself together, collects its shattered pieces and climbs up my bones, slowly.
Another explosion occurs before it gets to my chest, and so my heart falls down again to start its journey over.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, thrice, a hundred times, and it is a thousand shame on me.
(“A believer does not allow himself to be stung twice from one (and the same) hole.”)
And it seems the war is taking my faith away.
