Roo 7 3 Story 5

A winter of paper:

I have an 11-year-old son. He is my eldest boy. He loves me very much and wants nothing more in life than to be like me. Rowdy-dowdy and fun-loving, just like me! He even mimics my humorous style and watches how I make his mother laugh. Gradually, I watch him turn into a mini-me. He loves to make his mother laugh even in silly situations. His happiness peaks when he makes his mother laugh, for he feels like he owns the world!

One of my son’s most joyful moments is the time I challenge him in PlayStation soccer at the gaming store next door. Here he starts teasing me and says: “you play better than me because you are older but there will come a day when I will beat you like my maternal uncles beat you, for they play better than you hahahaha…” I start running after him pretending to be angry, as he hides in his mother’s lap. She looks at me and says: “your game is weak compared to my brothers’ hahaha…”

On the first Friday of this vile offensive, I was washing for prayer when my son rushed through the door and said:” Daddy, daddy, the sky is raining papers!!” I immediately realized that the occupier planned an atrocity as per usual.

‘Leave to the south of the Strip as this is the safe place. You have 24 hours. If you don’t go, we will consider you to be terrorists.’

What nonsense is this?

What logic are you using?

I went down to the street to find my neighborhood evacuating. Lucky he who owns a car! He could take his family and went to the allegedly safe south. Not me. I don’t own a car. Even if I had a car, how do I move when I am responsible for 19 people of my family, father, sister, and siblings’ families who all live in the same building?

This is the most difficult decision I will ever make. On it henges not only my future, but also that of every person under my care. We may never come to our home again, we may die on the way, we may truly find safety. We don’t know.

Oh dear God, what do I do??

I look at the kids and my dad and my family to find everyone asking what do we do?

I feel helpless. For the first time in my life I lose control like this. My thoughts froze as if I turned into an object. I suddenly told everyone to take as much water as they could, to empty their school bags and fill them with some clothes, water, and food so we can start heading south.

My wife: “Do we leave our house that we built with blood and sweat, one brick at a time?”

And then she started looking at every detail, every room, and every part of the house. I couldn’t say a thing because I was feeling the exact same way. At that moment, that mischievous child, who always wanted to be like his father, said: “Mama, let us leave and if we couldn’t continue, we can come back home. And if we die, we go to heaven. Don’t you always tell us that when we die we go to heaven and be rid of terror?”

We looked at him as if God had spoken to us through him to ease us into the lesser of two evils.

Do I feel proud that this boy has truly become his father’s son or do I weep that he grew up so early that he accepted death at 11? I didn’t know. But I did thank God that he was my son, the apple of my eye.

We finally managed to get ourselves out of the house; the sight infront of us full of glass and destruction, and the sight behind us of our home that we may be looking at for the last time. The plan was to head to the hospital and from there look for cars to drive us to the allegedly safe south.

Roo7 – Anonymous Mental Health Professional in Gaza, Palestine (for fear of being targeted)
27 October 2023