Yesterday marked twenty days since they bombed Gaza. That’s what I initially wanted to say, but didn’t want to start with it. They were pulling corpses out of the rubble as if they were dolls. They pull, but the corpses refuse to come out of the debris. They were covered with dust and blood. I had a strong urge to go and wipe the dust off myself. Maybe because I wanted to see the faces clearly. I say “bombed Gaza” and not “declared war on it,” because “war” sounds lighter.
.
“War” was a big word when I was young. But I grew bigger and it grew smaller. There are so many wars around us we’ve gotten used to them. I never experienced bombing and that’s why it always seemed severe and hard. There is an absurd repetition in bombing. When we were kids we used to play “War Started in . . .” We used to draw a circle and divide it according to the number of players. We gave each part the name of a country. We would often choose names like Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq, and Egypt. No one ever chose Saudi Arabia or Morocco. One of us would then hold a branch and say, “The war started in . . . Lebanon,” and then throw the branch away from the person who chose the name of that country, and that person would have to catch the others.
I hated that game. Not because it involved war, but because I never liked running after someone and catching them. Did you use to play it too? I don’t remember that someone taught me how to play it, or any other game. As if these games grew up with me. What types of games did you play when you were a kid? I don’t remember you telling us much about your childhood. Except a few sentences in passing. How come I never realized that before? Weren’t you a child once? You were a youth, a young woman, a wife, a mother, a grandmother, and a seamstress. But you were never a child.
Forget about games and childhood, and let’s go back to bombing. As I mentioned, they bombed Gaza. They bombed them with airplanes and bombs, and what else? My heart is numb. Maybe my heart has withered and the hearts of those they bombed have become numb. I looked for you yesterday. I went out to the streets, the sea, and to that spot where I found you. I stood there for a while, hoping that something would pass by indicating that there is life after death. But you weren’t there. How can I say what I want to say to you? Father. He is gone as well. Yes. He left three days ago. My mother called me in the morning crying. “You have to come. Your father is very sick.”
I took a taxi and went home. Dr. Abed, the one you called a chatterbox, was there. Baba is gone, Tata. He died before I got to know him well.
The truth is he committed suicide. But we didn’t tell anyone, because suicide is shameful. We didn’t tell anyone. His death seemed normal after all these days of bombing Gaza.
I looked for you and didn’t find you. I wanted to tell you that they bombed Gaza and that Baba committed suicide.
I went toward the al-Bahr Mosque and couldn’t find you. I didn’t find you.
Baba committed suicide and they bombed Gaza for the twentieth day.
Baba’s suicide was trivial after all these days of them bombing Gaza.
(Excerpted with permission from The Book of Disappearance by Ibtisam Azem, published by Simon & Schuster India; 2025)