Heaven Under the Rubble
A Palestinian Story
‘We have torn pieces of a cloth, black, red, green, white. We tie them to our heads, we circle them around our arms, we cover our soulless bodies with them,’ said a Palestinian man, a long piece of brown, ugly woolen cloth wrapped around his head, its one end rubbing the hair of his white beard, the wrinkles under his eyes had more stories than all the biblical stories he was grown up listening to combined, and his eyes, I cannot forget such deep, profound, melancholic eyes. They showed signs of old age, brilliantly evident.
‘I was a child back then,’ Old Man then said, ‘when they came for us, a very small one. My mother was from Jaffa, and my father, oh my dear father, was from Jenin. That humid afternoon of the year 48, they told us, people in military uniforms, guns and rifles hung about them, that our home, where our mothers brought us into this world, now belongs to them. In the heat of that cursed afternoon, our pulpy figs turned tasteless, our olives became orphans, and with them, thousands of children.’
His old eyes were looking at the sky now and then, and he kept murmuring as if talking to himself, ‘It has come, the time has come. Since the great displacement, not a single day has passed that I don’t hear the news of someone’s death, the muffled bellows of my fellow countrymen. It occurs as near as our neighborhood, or in my long-lost city of Jenin, or in Jabaliya, in Jaffa, in Ramallah, or on Yousef’s ancient radio. I feel bad for the radio. We lost it in last night’s bombardment. Unaware of the tragedy, Yousef hung it around the chair, and when the first bomb dropped there,’ he raised his finger at the rubble in front of my eyes, ‘it consumed Yousef’s shop, the radio might’ve melted down in the fire of oppression or crushed under the feet of chaos.’
As he uttered the last word, he suddenly turned his head down from the sky and looked me in the eyes. His razor-sharp gaze pierced through my soul, as if asking me by frantically shaking my shoulders, ‘When would all this come to an end, Son?’ And I heard in my head, a soft, gentle voice, gradually rising from rubble, cooing like a child. I didn’t understand where it was hinted at; whom was it referring to? Was it whispering to people like me, who watch everything unfold before their widened eyes, and yet turning a blind eye, or calling to the souls—those who, according to Old Man, much of the world has already lost?
As this strange voice hung over my ear, Bertrand Russell’s austere question was bestowed upon my mind, and I couldn’t help imagining Old Man beside me saying it.
How much longer is the world willing to endure this spectacle of wanton cruelty?
After he raised this imaginative question along with his thick brows, I couldn’t dare to look into his eyes. All of a sudden, a feeling of guilt stuck in my throat, and I found myself having difficulty swallowing. Then I tried to clear my throat, and with it, I lowered my gaze, not wanting him to see the bubbling guilt boiling inside me. That’s the closest answer to reality I gave him.
‘What is your name, Son? I won’t remember it, but tell me,’ he asked in a soft voice, scratching his beard, chinning up.
‘Dan, I am Dan. I work with Two Stories, it’s a global political magazine, Uncle,’ I called him Uncle, because I didn’t know what else to call, so keeping his old age in mind, I came up with Uncle. And it filled me with confidence when he smiled at my remark.
‘You don’t talk like a foreigner. Your accent, how do I say it, is much more grounded. Where are you from?’ he asked curiously. Wrinkles around his deepened eyes twitched.
‘India, but I spent most of my adult life away from home, and at times, I reckon that my life in a strange way is attached to war-stricken places. Firstly, I covered Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, and surprisingly lived and survived there, and now, I am here in Gaza, let’s see what…’ He interrupted as I was about to say the next thing, then I paused to look at him, he widened his cheek and squinted his eyes, then said.
‘Many years ago, I had this strange dream that I would go back to Jenin, restore my ancestral house, and live in the shadows of our little garden, when this, the bombs, the guns, the blood, all this would be over. And then I would take a ship to India and be there for a brief time, then come back. I don’t know why I wanted it so badly. Maybe, in those freshly prisonous days, we all needed fresh air, and our sleepless eyes were more prone to the act of dreaming!’ Again, he looked at the sky as he finished speaking the last word, his mouth hung open as if not wanting to let go of the word ‘dreaming’.
Again, I forgot how to respond to this, but suddenly I found myself saying, ‘It will be free, the air, it will be free from the metallic smell of gunpowder, it will be free from the vapours of blood hung in the clouds, and it will be free from the shackles of tyranny. How, when, where, I can’t say. But I know for certain that you will freely roam under this sky, and it will appear as it used to appear in Jenin when you were a child, glamorous, its roof filled with countless stars, and the earth would grow figs as big as the setting sun.’ I paused, then looked behind to the west, at the falling sun, thick orange and boldly looking at both of us.
The Old Man slightly adjusted himself on the cemented chair, a piece of someone’s wall, or the roof of someone’s kitchen. We were both sitting on the rubble of a home that stood there at the side of the street, facing one tattered mosque, whose one minaret had fallen a week ago, as a missile the size of a healthy camel hit its midline at the stroke of midnight. Since then, the grumpy sound of aircraft hasn’t faded away. In fact, on the contrary, the sound has intensified, as more missiles began hitting the buildings, mosques, recently built houses, mounds and even already-stricken roads, and as a result of such heavy shelling meant to destroy the soul of the region, we were sitting on the rubble of one such building.
‘You talk exactly like us. Where did you learn such proficient Arabic?’ He asked, his face appeared out of the gloom, the wrinkles had faded a little, and it shone as if he was talking to a lost friend.
‘I learned it back home,’ I said, then suddenly took control of myself and stopped. I fret in the moment, thinking whether he would like the mention of home or not. Then I turned silent for a brief time, and so did everything around us; neither he nor I said anything, we just stared at the sky.
Some more people in grey, black, red, brown shirts joined us on the rubble. First, the two of them, one in his thirties and another slightly younger than him, broke down as they sat down on the big rectangular chunk of a wall, out of which the iron rods were peeping out and the colour chips were cracking on its surface. Tears from their swelled eyes streamed; in a moment, their faces were wet, they cupped them and sat there. The worst kind of anxiety wrapped me up as I saw their hands shivering and getting wet with tears. Then two more men, both of them older than the previous ones, began to sob quietly. From time to time, they tried to wipe their tears before they could come out and transform into an outrageous ocean. All of us stayed where we were; nobody had asked them what had happened or why they were crying. People in this region have long forgotten to ask such an obvious question.
Despite that, I wanted to help them, but I didn’t know how to do that, or what to say, because all the consoling words seemed to have lost the charm of comforting. What can you say in such a place where death is more powerful than life, where the cries of burials are more boisterous than the laughter of children? What can you say to the people who have seen their children, muffling the final sigh, to the fathers who close the eyes of their daughters and sons with their trembling hands, and to the mothers who have run out of tears, and yet their miseries know no end? What can anybody say to them? Are there words so powerful that exist in this world to comfort a mother who lost her son to the blows of war, a war their boyhood, their infancy has nothing to do with, and yet pay its price with their delicate lives?
As four of them cried quietly, other people saw them and hung their heads down. Maybe all of them were crying or wanting to cry, or maybe, like all the mothers in here, they too have run out of tears.
As I was watching their faces with stealing glances, Old Man muttered something which I didn’t get, so I asked him what he said.
‘This day reminds me of my mother; it has this odd air that seems familiar to me. It’s the same air that blew at the nights when she told me stories about Prophets, about good and evil, about what they said, their teachings, their kindness, their compassion that turned their foes into friends. And I remember, she told me “Heaven lies under the feet of mothers”, when I asked her as an innocent child who had no understanding of how things work out here on earth, and who was adamant going to the paradise because my grandfather had died just then and when I asked my father about grandfather’s whereabouts, he said, “He is in heaven, ever happy than he was here and looking at us”. But I wanted to go to him and see him once, just once, so I asked my mother where this heaven lies. And she quoted the Prophet, hinting at her feet, she sounded sarcastic and smiled at me. But when I tried to look beneath them, I saw nothing, then she said again that there’s a certain time when it will reveal itself, only then would I be able to see it. You must be wondering that I’ve gone mad, Son, are you?’ He said, side glancing at me. I told him I understood what he was saying, then he continued as he got my attention, ‘When I said the time has come, I meant the time for heaven to reveal itself.’ He then sighed like a man who had waited all this time for the angel of death to strike him down, but the angel never came, and now, in this moment, he saw the glimpse of his scythe, shining like a sharp blade. Curiosity shrouded me. I wanted to ask, how, in the time as cruel as it can be, the blood spurting everywhere, the howls and shrieks beating like a living heart, bustling cities turning into deafer, silent ruins, how in such hard times, heaven would make its appearance?
I didn’t understand this peculiar juxtaposition. When we say that two swords cannot be kept in one sheath, at the same time, how can we say that heaven would appear in a place where hell is dominant? But I didn’t dismiss his claim, as I know this one fact that hope is powerful, more powerful than bombs, guns and missiles combined, more powerful than old leaders deciding which country to keep, which to blow, which to occupy, more powerful than the scythe of death. It is the only weapon they carry in their red, sleepless, bleeding eyes.
As the sun set in the west, I heard the calls for prayer coming from all sides. People gathered, some with their own rugs, some with black and white kaffiyehs, which they placed on the hard ground. Those who came empty-handed, the men with long rugs and kaffiyehs, offered them to stand alongside so that they’d share the same piece of cloth to prostrate before the Almighty.
The Old Man disappeared into the praying crowd, and I didn’t see him again. For a very brief time, and I don’t know why, I remembered him talking about heaven.
After the whole night and half a day of bombardment, everybody thought that the night ahead would be silent, hoping that no bombs would drop on their city, and nobody would be killed. People here, especially the older ones, hope for this day and night, from the rising of the sun to the rising of the moon. But each time the sun rises, death, tears and shrieks rise with it. Each time the moon appears on the horizon, it is crimson, the colour of blood. Despite day and night’s naked betrayals, their constant bullying, they pray for a night of silence; they pray five times each day, and each time they pray for that one morning when they wouldn’t hear the cry of the grieving mother. I asked myself the same question that all of them ask the Almighty while kneeling on the ground, looking at the sky, grey with ash, ‘When will that day come?’
The night descended, hauntingly chilly with peculiar humidity. I was on my way to the hospital run by the Indonesians, where my colleagues with no to little medical experience, had volunteered, for the hospital was running out of nursing staff, as several doctors and nurses were killed two weeks ago at three in the morning, when missiles caught them off guard, dropped on the posterior of the hospital, damaging half the building. In the attack, around two hundred patients and hospital staff, and two or three journalists were killed.
My Syrian friend, Ridwa, called me for they needed a helping hand, as the overwhelming crowd of wounded patients was surging after the attacks in the hospital’s neighborhood constantly being carried out.
I was still about three kilometres from the hospital when I saw a sparkling bow appear in the black, still sky. It was a missile coming from the south, jingling like a thousand bells. It came closer and closer to our vehicle; we thought it was going to fall on us.
To fly the ground, we got out of the rusty car and began running to the small refugee colony, which contained several adobe homes, a single mosque, whose walls were the colour of bricks; its single standing minaret suggested that it had been hit before, as it was shorter than it ought to be. We ran with all our might, then a man stopped, his face upward, looking at the sky. He shouted in a disturbed voice, ‘Run opposite, it’s going to hit the houses’.
We all began running in the opposite direction, leaving the colony and its houses behind. The missile dropped on the three homes in our sight like a doomsday thud, and the shrieks bubbled up, the fire broke out, and the smoke spilt high in the sky.
Two men, who accompanied me, loosened their bodies on the road and buried their knees in the dust, joining their elbows together, crying so intensely that for a brief time, they lost the ability to let out their voices. Three of us then started running again, but to the colony, where mournful cries began to rise.
One house was hit badly, and two, each on both sides, were destroyed partly. As we reached there, several men gathered around and were already helping the howling women and children caught in the rubble.
We freed two or three men who were stuck under the heavy weight of the roof. The ruin looked so similar, mizzled in white, all dust that it was hard to differentiate whose roof was whose. The hit was so potent that the fire didn’t stop until several hours had passed. A group of men and women were trying to calm the fire down by throwing soil and tiny rocks from the ruins. I felt numb for some time as my mind seemed to have gone deaf. I found myself shivering, hair on my neck became erect, sweat drizzled from the side of my feet and filled my shoes.
The men, women, and children, wailing, searching for their own people in the chaotic setting, their lips trembling with fear, their teeth chattering, their bodies hitting on the ground, trying to break the sounding rocks, hoping to find their lost family member’s arm, or a leg, or something, something they carried, a locket, a key, a spec, a tool kit, or something which would tell them that it’s her son, or his daughter, or her husband, or his sister, or someone’s mother.
In the surging heat, the house teeming with fire, my eyes stuck on a loader cart, on its loose wooden plank, a boy was sitting. He was about two and had no idea what was happening around him. Someone had put him in the loading rickshaw, and he was crying furiously because everyone else was crying. His cheeks and nose were filled with dust, his face covered in ash. I fetched him and took him in my arms. The Boy began to cry more as if I took his toy, but as I caressed his head and cheeks and shushed him by rubbing his back, he calmed down a bit; his cries began to fade, but his whimpering continued, demanding the presence of his mother and father, whom we knew nothing about. I took him around and showed his face to each man and woman I met on the chaotic ground, asking them if they knew this boy. Nobody said anything, just looked at him with empathy, with eyes full of tears. Suddenly, I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was reaching out for the Boy; the fingers were curled and full of dust. I turned around. It was a middle-aged woman with wrinkles around her eyes; her nose was still running. She looked at me and then began caressing the boy’s cheek, running her fingers through his soft hair.
‘You know whose child this is? Someone has put him there on the garbage rickshaw,’ I said, pointing with my head to the rickshaw. ‘Are you his mother?’ I said, my lips perturbing.
‘I am his neighbor, that’s his house,’ she pointed with her finger at the burning house, the house that’d been hit.
‘It’s hard to find his mother; my husband and I were looking for them, but we found nothing but ash and fire. She is definitely under the ruins,’ she began to sob. A man came from the front and consoled her. She buried her face in his chest and cried for a minute. I watched their homes slowly descending into the pit of darkness. I patted the boy’s back, trying to control his whimpering.
‘We shall find his mother,’ I said to the woman and her husband. They nodded in agreement.
The night was fading. The eastern sky was gradually turning orange. The fire had finally been put out, but still, we couldn’t manage to find the boy’s parents. I didn’t put him on the ground or give him to someone to take care of him. As the grip of his little hands clutched to me, I developed a deep affection towards him, a fatherly feeling. The whole time, he was in my arms. He’d sleep for several minutes, and when he’d hear the cries of people around him as they found someone they knew in the ruins, he’d wake up, look at me as I was trying to comfort him and would resume his crying.
A man shouted at me and gestured for me to come near him. I ran as fast as I could, shushing the little boy, my one hand wrapping his back.
‘There she is, it’s her anklet,’ the woman’s voice broke; she couldn’t look at it, so she turned to her husband and cried hiccups, rapidly rubbing her eyes on his shoulder as he wrapped his hands around her.
I couldn’t see her face; the roof had fallen over it, and all her body except the latter part of the ankle was under ruins of her own roof, a roof under which she might’ve chuckled at cheap jokes of her husband, or giggled with her friends in both good and bad days, seen too much happiness and too much melancholy, and might’ve sobbed under the same roof when the first time she saw her child’s shining face, moon-like, after keeping him for nine months in her divine womb. And here she lay, under the same roof, her body entirely covered in dust, her boy, bewilderedly looking at her.
The little boy saw his mother lying dead. Though he didn’t know for sure, he began to cry more than he ever did since I found him. The woman looked at his white face, a stream of tears canaled on his cheeks. She muttered something, a prayer under her breath, then gestured to me to take the Boy away from the horrific scene.
As I was taking him away from the house that became a tomb, he was crying so intensely, looking over my shoulder, that I had to slow down my pace to gently rub his back, to give some caresses on his head. Despite my efforts to woo him, his eyes were fixed on the rubble. I gazed at him; his eyes were full of tears, but he made sure not to falter as if trying to pierce the wreckage of the houses to rescue his mother. Then he lowered his gaze, his eyes widened. He was looking at her feet, though we were standing at a fair distance, but still, her silver anklet was visible, shining as the rays of the sun timorously attacked it. I thought, I’d breakdown in the moment, but his sharp stare baffled me and kept me standing, as though he had guessed from the anklet, that it belonged to his mother, and she wouldn’t come back again to comfort him, or as if he had seen something more important, or had been seeing all along, and it was not his mother’s shining anklet, nor was it the ruins of his home, but, as Old Man said, ‘heaven’, revealing itself. I put my final gaze at her dusty, pale feet, tears jiggled down my cheek. But as I see it, heaven the man talked about, heaven the boy saw, heaven this country once was, now lies under the rubble.
Author’s Note
This story is a work of fiction because reality in Gaza is much crueler. I’d raise the same question as Bertrand Russell had raised two days before he died, ‘How much longer is the world willing to endure this spectacle of wanton cruelty?’