11 October, 12:12 AM

In war, 

nights compete over which one will be the harshest on us. 

13 October, 12:56 AM

Hello. Ahmed from Gaza is talking to you.

I worry that my name would become breaking news, where for example, it would say: “…an X number of victims’ bodies have been recovered during a violent bombing of different areas” and that I will become a dull number added to the counter which has not stopped counting to this moment. I would not like it for my name and that of my family to become just numbers, whether odd or even.

I have many dreams, for example, to travel outside the world of Gaza, to a wider world…Discover it, try using my language with others, and truly believe the scenes, the images and the experiences that I see on the internet, showing the world and its diversity.

I am talking to you now, not having any information on what’s happening outside. Outside my home I mean- the one we returned to after our area was bombed a few days ago. There is no means of communication with anyone. The bombing sounds haven’t stopped, and light bombs illuminating the area, warning of the unknown. 

What I fear most is that everything will turn into normal events: the normal is that the house gets bombed, and the abnormal is that it didn’t get an advance warning. The normal is that the child dies, and the abnormal is that he died screaming…And many other things, that cannot fit in one text.

I am Ahmed, and my friends call me (Asem/Asoumi). By the way, I don’t know much about my friends’ news. I check on them through short videos, whenever I get the opportunity to be online. I check all the faces, I get reassured that my friends are not among them. At the same time, I realize that all those in the pictures and videos, are in fact my friends... so I cry.

I am Ahmed, and since childhood, I hated Arabic and grammar lessons. I hate questions about finding the difference between two things. I hate answers, and I love questions. I paused at a question two days ago: ‘What is the difference between escalation and war?’ and I wondered, what importance does this question have, if the result is the same: a mother crying and a screaming child...if there was a chance for crying and screaming. 

I am Ahmed and I am afraid that I will die and become an ordinary number, and that everything will be gone, before I complete the text.

17 October, 11:15 pm 

Facebook asks me ‘what’s on your mind?’…I swear to God, I am constantly thinking about the idea that we are alive, until this moment, by pure coincidence.

And the numbers we see, are painful and make us cry; four thousand martyrs so far…Four thousand stories, memories, narratives and tales.  There is no need to write and talk; our screaming and crying are heard by the dead. 

And, oh Facebook, how many times did they have to kill us to ensure we died, and a lot of what’s inside us, died with us too. 

And that every day, we wake up, to count ourselves and count who remained from our friends…give ourselves a pat, hold our nerves together, and fight what is left of the survival battle.  

I ask myself another question: whether there is actually a safe place in Gaza. My friends died inside and outside of Gaza. Tell me, please, where do we go! 

Has anyone told you before that we are superheroes? Seriously, who said that? All we were and still are trying to do, is make this life bearable. Is this such a difficult thing for the world? Too much to ask?

20 October, 7:52 pm

I’ve reached a point where I’m afraid of myself.

I don't feel anything, the news don’t surprise me nor get my attention. 

I started reading the numbers in such a normal way. I lie a lot when asked (How are you?). I do not care how I am. 

I don't care who writes about us and who doesn't, what is the point of writing at all, when with every word, a friend falls?

The houses falling on our heads have become normal. The scenes of continuous displacement, I do not give much thought about, nor plan for. 

Days have become so alike, and I do not recall the last time I laughed. Were we laughing before, or were we pretending to do so, just in front of ourselves?

The sight of bombing houses does not sadden me…In fact I feel ashamed that our house is still standing despite being partly damaged.

Now I am afraid of myself, not of the war.

Now I have totally realized that this war has killed everything in us, even our feelings of surprise and sadness.

23 October, 9:17 pm

I apologize to all my martyr friends, as we do not have much time to mourn, and when you ask why our grief reaches them intermittently, we learnt  that as the war continued, we have many reasons to be sad, so you receive the crumbs of our sadness.

I apologize to myself and to my friends, for not having the time to check on you, as the war has taken away our time and rest, and there is just no time in war.

I apologize to all the children, I don't have a logical explanation to tell you what is really happening, or to tell you what you need to do, when your very small hearts face the tons of explosives.

I apologize for all the days and nights in which I complained of boredom. Boredom, in my opinion now, is that I am able to write, until this moment. The coincidence: we are still alive.

I apologize to my 28 year old self…I didn’t wish any of this for you; one of my wishes was to have the courage to confess my love to the girl I have loved. But due to the war, my courage today is just to control my letters, and not add new weights of sadness on any side. 

Finally, I apologize for my poor Arabic language, evident in this text. The twenty-eight letters could not really support me in writing this letter of apology.

25 October, 10:20 pm

I don't know who taught us to write, and why do we write? What is the purpose of writing and what the rationale of it in the first place?

My tongue is complex and my language seems confused and scared. My letters are stuttering, filled with unheard screams.

I hold my language, and from it, I try to extract something that would describe what is happening… But I am unable to, and I fail. I try to form something that would heal the wounds of my friends, but I can’t, and I fail again.

I think about having a normal conversation that is more than: (Did you find water? Did you take a shower? What did you have for lunch? Are you okay? Was it near or far?) and I fail to find questions beyond those. 

My language has failed with the first child trying to describe an entire city burning, when he had never seen in his life, a fire bigger than a matchstick.

29 October, 6:08 pm

Ahmed, coming out from under the rubble speaking to you..

The one who inhaled thousands of tons of dust… My color is gray (in case you needed to know)…The one who was unable to count his family members, split between the colors (of red and grey)- if you were able to see the colors anyway. 

Colors here do not have the luxury of being chosen. Red: You are full of blood. Grey: You have just embraced your and your neighbors' houses and stones, and came out breathing.

Ahmed, who witnessed death a bit ago, and his experience in psychological support failed to help him overcome the screaming of children and mothers.

My words could not assist me to formulate anything to say and put on children’s chests. In fact, I did not see anyone. I only knew they were alive, from their screams (a tip for you: always know your beloved ones’ screams, it is the only way you could recognize them, and know if they were alive or not).

I, Ahmed, hate all the dreams that I have. I no longer have beautiful familiar memories, no friends left to recognize, or a safe home to be in.

Ahmed, and I hate the world that cannot stop a war bigger than my heart and the hearts of children.

I am Ahmed, and I do not want to arrange this text, as I am in a hurry. I may not be able to publish it before another shell misses me, and both of us, the text and I, see the light.

8 November, 8:24 pm

The question here is: What is faster, a rocket that exceeds the sound barrier, or the scream of a child who snapped the rocket with his mouth and spat it out, while he was reciting the Two Shahadas?

Do not immerse yourself too much in the question, because while you are thinking of a smart, logical answer, there is another child who just fell while reciting the screams.

Do not wonder at this question, it is not directed at you.. I ask myself questions, thinking it is the only way to save me from insanity!

In the past, I used to defend the insane. I was their sane hero and savior. I was afraid that anyone would talk about them. I actually didn’t like anyone talking about them. I would only talk about them as sane. Until the war happened, and that was that. 

Now the insane person is talking to you, whose hair is grey and cannot catch his breath (Don’t tell anyone about this… it is a secret between me and the children. I lent them my breath so that they could spit out, with all their might, all the rockets they caught). This is total madness, right? It is okay.  The point is that the chief of the insane, is asking you: ‘How are you today, sane person?’ 

 I know…this is another question.. It is alright, you may dwell on it.

11 November, 6:22 pm

He wakes up from a peaceful sleep..plays his favorite music, probably jazz, if he has a good taste. He has abundance of water. He will probably take a warm bath while the music is playing, then he will slowly have his breakfast. He will tell his wife, “I love you,” and she may reciprocate. He picks up the morning newspaper to check what his horoscope fortune tells (I think he's a Pisces, for his indecisiveness). He dresses up, wears his formal suit, and cannot decide on which tie color would be most suitable for this day (he will choose red because he is used to loving this color and what it stands for), and perhaps he sprays some perfume, not because he likes it, but because it is customary to do so, and most likely his perfume’s brand is (Sauvage). He gets into his heavily guarded car, and goes in a secure convoy to his work, to tell us a secret.

And while all this is happening, we are in Gaza: we die, we scream, and we curse the night. We praise, we ask for forgiveness, we are afraid, we sleep, we wake up, we panic, we are astonished, we scream again, and again, we are afraid, we die, we emerge from under the rubble, we curse the night, and then we search to hear a secret.

We then hear the man in the suit with the red tie saying: (We condemn the war on Gaza), and we discover that the words stink, because he had forgotten to clean them this morning.

18 November, 2:52 pm

It’s the forty-third day of war. I had stopped writing, the day I lost my words and my voice with my friends and neighbors. 

I realized how old the war is by coincidence, just like how I am still alive, as no missile has missed me, nor has it turned me into a number, until the moment I wrote this post. 

I am living a terrifying nightmare called (war), with open eyes, which could not enjoy to this day, two hours of peaceful, uninterrupted, and safe and content sleep.

My daily livelihood is very limited, and I consider myself fortunate enough to manage having coffee, even if not in the morning (as I spend a lot of time searching for a cost-effective way to make coffee) and I succeed, despite the poor kind and quality. From my modest experience to date: coffee satisfies your hunger for the longest period of time. 

There is no means of communication among my friends, and I don't know a lot of news. I know the news around me, through what I observe with my own eyes. The summary of the news that I know, is as follows: There are no vegetables/or edible items in the market. Significant progress is made with my neighbour's firewood collection. Cigarette prices have become equivalent to gold. A friend succeeded in showering without using shampoo (to save water) after a week and days of wiping with wet paper. The world has miserably failed to stop the war.

24 November, 5:21 pm

The morning where goodness in the world seized to exist. 

I'm still alive.

I saw many of my friends and relatives die in front of me. First aid is just logic. In this way, I helped a child who was moaning of pain after the house next to us got bombed. After hours of logical first aid; Logic did not help the child, and he died, with many questions:

The first question: Why the war?

The second question: Until when this war?

Third: How many children does it take for the war to stop?

Fourth: How does normal life look like?

Fifth: Does the one who put us in war, realize that our hearts are too small to bear it?

I could not help the child who was drowning in his questions, and his question marks injured my right shoulder, in particular. 

All my possible ways of survival have become very limited. My memory does not stop collecting the screams of children, and my heart is crying over everything, and does not stop.

Those wearing the lavish suits in the world…You know yourselves very well... Leave us alone, drowning in our questions, and there is absolutely no need to invent new ones. And stop the war.

29 November, 2:00 pm

What do we do during the truce?

Fear the return of the war. 

3 December, 6:55 am

I am writing now while I am shivering, and I justify that I am shivering from the cold, not from fear.

I ask myself why all of this is happening really, and what is my true definition of fear, when I was the first to flee hearing the sound of missile fragments flying at us.

What was I afraid of? Why do they call fleeing “sweetness of the soul” , when what’s happening is the opposite of sweetness?

I survived fear/death for the third or fourth time (I don't know the real count), and survival here is not a legendary act.

The frightened person who is talking to you is neither a superhero nor a historical legend. He is a very ordinary person, who has a few simple dreams: to be able to make silly jokes again about everything happening around me…to be a very ordinary person, nothing more.

I write now while I’m shivering, and this is because of cold and fear.