Birds of Gaza
Fiction by Hadeel Salameh
In Gaza, we learn to fly before we can walk. When children die, they become birds in heaven. I dream of waking up to them chirping at my window, but instead it’s the sounds of construction. We are always building — rebuilding.
My mother used to say we need to finish the puzzles we’re working on before moving on to the next, but I would tell her that’s not fair, that the adults are continuously piecing together our homeland like a puzzle with edges folded outwards. It’s how I would get her to push dinner back to play with us some more. We never finished a single puzzle, built in quarters of two or three at a time, and my mother made a habit of collecting pieces and tucking them into places around our home—on the bookshelf, in the pantry, in one of our toy boxes. She couldn’t let go of the small pieces, always assuring us we’d “go back to them,” while pulling out another box of a thousand pieces. I think she saw these small pieces as parts of us, the thousand homes never finished because of having to start new ones all the same.
Every person in our city is a worker; we piece together blocks of concrete over another from dusk to dawn, until the sky becomes dim and we all have to go back to our folded homes, just to wake up the next morning to a sky empty of all the birds that have fled. Maybe that’s why we die, so the skies will not remain empty. So there will always be something to look up to.
Julia’s hair is sweaty and sticks to her face. I brush it from her eyes as she sleeps on my chest, strands stiff like the feathers we used to find burrowed under the dirt when I’d play soccer with the other children at the UNWRA school, Julia cheering on in the sidelines and running after us. Between our lessons, barefoot and free we ran around in our cages.
My sister’s hands do not let go of my shirt. They tug reflexively, her unconscious body awake. Is she dreaming of today, afraid to wake up and find herself still stuck in it? She frowns and smiles as she sleeps, a smile after the frown. Is she practicing her dribble, running towards victory in a football match or away from the defeat of our nation? Can she even tell the difference? Soccer, games, is all she knows and lives for and today we kicked around rocks instead, dirt still coated on the soles of her tiny feet.
Before Julia was born, my mother would play the Quran loudly in our home so she would come into this world a believer. We walked our hallways listening to verses of rivers and gardens underneath our feet. She would put me to bed with stories, read over her belly, so my sister would know exactly when Little Nutbrown Hare was thrown into the air, his legs to the moon. She would kiss my hands and feet before pulling the blanket over me, “you hold my love close tonight,” she’d say, “however far your dreams take you, inna lil lahi wa inna ilahi rajioon.”
The last time she tucked us in, she didn’t need to turn the lights off because we’ve been in the dark. With only the moonlight and sparks of stars exploding in the sky, illuminating in fractions. Her love to us all the way to the moon, and our father, waiting for us, would send it back from the last time the stars illuminated. If Julia dies now, I’ll know exactly which bird is her—it’ll be the one dipping down and rocketing up and spiraling, its feathers purple and blue, shooting in the air like webs from Ghost Spider’s wrists. She’ll be the fun bird, and what will I be, will I be a bird if I die now, a child robbed of his childhood? A child who learned to read searching lists of martyrs for his father’s name. A child who overnight must become both parents to his younger sibling is no longer a child.
We slept outside, huddled on torn mattresses our neighbors pulled beneath the rubble of our homes. The sky is vast and open above us. Julia fell asleep with her face in my shirt. I don’t think she wanted to see the stars light up. The stars that took our home and mother and left her with only me to explain to her one day that we had parents, too. These stars, I tell her, chase away the birds, and chase us into the skies all the same.
It’s been a few hours since we’ve felt the water at the soles of our feet, or smelled the flowers from our eternal gardens or seen our mother, since she’s told us of her love. She had tucked us in and remained at our side. I could hear her reciting verses of Quran over us in my sleep, half awake even before she stopped suddenly, in a frenzy to wake us, “we have to go to another house.” It was the third time we had to since the attacks started.
Before we could leave, the bombs sounded closer and louder and I didn’t realize how close they were until the ceiling started to shake and we hid into our mother’s chest. She breathed in deeply so she wouldn’t scream in our faces, doing everything to hold us and we didn’t move until the round of bombing stopped. We felt the building shake and didn’t take anything with us when we left.
We made it outside and to our neighboring building and after my mother put Julia in my arms and situated us with our neighbors she went back to our home for the food and a few of our belongings. Another round of bombardment started not long after. The home we just left directly hit this time, our mother still there. All the neighborhood went to pull out the bodies from the concrete stones and caved in walls.
There were so many women pulled out, almost all wearing similar patterned prayer clothes, but I still knew which one was our mother, even though her face was unrecognizable when the uncles asked me to confirm her body. Our favorite book and Julia’s plush bunny were still in her hands.
In Gaza there’s no time to grieve. Prayers over the dead and prayers to stay alive must be said together. We pass around a bottle cap the adults fill with water for us. I fill the cap five times so I can fill Julia’s fifteen, that is what mothers would do. Israel cut off water and electricity so we have to use what we have sparingly. “Mama is with Baba, on the moon,” I tell my sister as she continues to cry for her. I think she understands mama will not come back, even though I haven’t told her she’s been killed. She sits on my lap and turns to my chest, puts my hand on her head, so I play with her hair like mama used to.
The men and uncles in the streets don’t try to wipe their faces of tears, and I think it’s their softness that makes them men. Journalists filming everything. If we live through this, it’ll be because the world saw their faces, and was moved. “Ya Allah, Ya Allah,” a man holding his little girl, about Julia’s age, tries to give her the pacifier, but she is dead. He keeps trying to get her to take it, “ma ilna ghyrak, ya Allah.” And I change my mind, if we live through this, it’ll be because of God alone.
“Bubu,” Julia points at the girl, baby, she calls her. “Bubu, bubu, bidi bubu.” She reaches her arms out to grab her, thinking she’s one of her dolls. “Amu, aa’tini al bubu, bidi al’ab,” she wants to play with the baby and walks over to to her father and asks for her and the girl’s father allows Julia to kiss her and touch her face until she starts asking why she’s covered in blood, asking if she’s dead.
“A’sfoura mn a’safir al janah ya ami,” he tells Julia. She’s now a bird in heaven, and Julia repeats this, then spreads her arms and runs around like a bird, me, too, me, too, she tells the uncle.
All this imagery of birds, as if it’s supposed to make me feel better to die a child. I don’t want to be a bird, I want to be human. More than that I want to be a hero, a journalist, like the ones that come visit us and show the world what we are. They’re so brave, unafraid of telling the world the truth, even if it means getting shot. I want to skate, too. There is a team of older kids, I’m not sure how old, but they aren’t fathers and aren’t children, either. They come to the school and teach us how to skateboard. It’s not easy to stand on the skateboard without falling, but I can do it. I haven’t fallen, not even once. Motaz says it’s important to learn how to fall so I don’t get hurt or break any bones, but I remind him I’m Palestinian, we don’t break.
The uncles comforting the father holding his daughter pat his back and recite prayers for him. They try to take his daughter from him and he starts to yell, that he won’t leave her, that he wants to hold her a while longer. So many people have been killed. The adults dig giant holes in places empty of buildings, and they put the bodies beside each other as close as possible to fit as many as they can, and then they place the dirt on top to cover them all, so that they could rest. They’re digging the lines now, and he wants to hold her until it’s time to put her there, beside the other children, he requests, so that they can teach her how to flap her wings when they wake.
“Come on, bubu,” I want to take her away from the mass graves before the adults begin placing the bodies inside. I take Julia’s hands, one in each of mine, and lift her into the air. She laughs so I do it again until she’s too heavy to do it a third time. “Oh my goodness, you’re getting so big,” I say, “and without having eaten since yesterday!” Her smile fades at the mention of food and I regret saying it; that is not what mothers would say. I pick her up with all the strength I have left, over my head, and tell her to shoot webs like Ghost Spider. “Tu tu tu, she makes spitting sounds between her teeth, laughing again. I lift her and he shoots webs up towards the buildings still standing until my arms shake like they’ve been hit and we both fall laughing.
We’re sitting at the side of the street. Our prophet, peace be upon him, told us not to spend our times sitting in the streets, but that if there’s nowhere else to go, sit on the right side, because even the streets have rights, and we must honor them by not looking at others unless they speak to us directly, not to harm anybody, return greetings of peace, and to do good. There’s no place else to go so I try to keep my gaze low, but I also need to find something to eat, for my sister to eat. Across the road is a dumpster, with a stray cat trying to find something to eat. I take Julia and place her on my shoulders, she laughs, asks me if we’re going to climb the walls. “No,” I tell her, “I need you to look into the dumpster, tell me if you can see any food.”
“Otay,” she says and I feel her foot on my face, climbing my nose to lift herself higher. She’s looking in, holding onto the rim, but can’t find anything. The cat’s around my feet, also waiting to know if she finds anything. Then an uncle comes over to us and starts yelling—not at us, but at the world for allowing us to be beggars to the dumpsters.
“Ya ami, habibi, I will get you some food.” He yells at others as he walks away, and goes to a long line of people waiting for bread at the bakery. But it’s been five days since the food has been cut off, whatever’s left will be gone before he reaches the front of the line. I’m so hungry and dizzy that I’m not sure if what I’m hearing is the sounds of the bombs dropping or my stomach crying.
And then the bombs drop—louder—this time closer, and the line for the bakery disperses, everyone screams as they run, only some away from the bombs that drop at the end of the street, but most towards them, towards the homes they left members of their families in, and the screaming quickly changes to cursing and prayers all at the same time. Mothers are calling for their children, children are calling for their mothers and fathers and the older children are looking for their younger siblings. Julia holds the stray cat and her bunny.
“Ma tkhafi,” she tells her and pets her temple. I know she’s terrified because she’s glued to my side, but she continues to stroke this cat and tell her not to be afraid. When children have their parents, they hear that they are loved, and it’s only until their parents are gone, I think, that we stop hearing we are loved. I kiss my little sister's head and tell her I love her, I don’t usually say it, it’s something only mama used to say, and we never said it to each other, I’m not sure why. I call her “ukhti,” sister, she calls me brother, “akhi,” that’s how we say I love you, by declaring our blood relation to one another, but what happens when death reaches us, and the blood inside me pours out of my body, and there is no longer anything tying me to her, so I tell her again, that I love her, so she knows somebody still does. I love her so much that I want to die before she does, so I will not have to see her dead; but if I die first, there won’t be anybody left to take care of her. I hope we die at the same time, both of us and our new cat, so that none of us is left wondering what’s next after everything that was left for us in the world has ended.
In Gaza, we are born into a never-ending orbit around the sun—we are brought here to live death while experiencing the beauty around us at the same time—the energy in the world pulls us in and spits us out as we spin around the largest and most powerful star in our solar system. We are brought into this world questioning our existence, not ever sure if we’re alive or close to living, the pieces of our lives dying the closer we get to the sun’s warmth and we stay alive enough to see the possibility of its light, but then we are burnt by its powerful rays. We feel hot shards of buildings on the ground, like moon rocks, but cannot stop running, gravity pulling us towards the goal of staying alive, everyone here wants to be Christiano Ronaldo or Messi. We smell the salt from the shore, feel the breeze from the outside, visiting us and breathing into our souls every now and then before the air is polluted from asteroids falling from the sky—just enough to make us cough but not choke.
In Gaza, we swallow as many breaths of fresh air we can get, so that when our fathers yell our names to the sky some strand of it is released back into the world. That is how we survive, as particles of energy scattered in the world.
The bombs continue to drop. I tell my sister I love her. I tell her to take a deep breath after me, and I breathe in the salt of the sea, as deeply as I can, so we take it with us into the sky.
Hadeel Salameh earned her MFA in Fiction at Bowling Green State University. Her work is forthcoming in New Orleans Review, and has appeared in The Rising Phoenix Review, Wrath Bearing Tree, Jerusalem Quarterly, Torrid Literary Journal, Drunk Monkeys, Apogee, Anchor Still Harbor, Muftah, SLAB Literary Art & Sound Book, and as honorable mentions to the Ibrahim Dakkak Awards and the MLK Jr. Day Writing Awards.
