The bombings will not stop when the conflict in Gaza is over. We will still be hurting from within because it left behind deep-caused injuries that are not reported in casualty statistics or news reports.
My youngest son, Malik, is one of the cruellest reminders of this truth for my family. He hasn’t seen his father in a year and four months. An Israeli airstrike killed Anas, his father, and my husband in Gaza City as he reported as a freelance journalist. At the time, I was four months along.
Anas was overjoyed when I learned what I was anticipating just before the genocide began. We spent evenings imagining each other’s plans for our children’s futures, finding a new home, and pursuing our studies, with him earning a PhD, and me earning a master’s degree. We came to terms with baby names, and we decided to call someone Malik if the child was a boy. We never chose a girl’s name.
Israel silenced a voice dedicated to exposing its crimes in Gaza by removing my husband from me and the dream of growing old together. Many people urged me to name the child after him, but I was unable to do so. I gave him the name Malik in order to honor Anas’s own choice.
Anas had poured his life into fatherhood before the war destroyed our lives. Ibrahim, our first son, was a constant companion even though he was only a father when he was three years old. Anas fed him, led him to prayer, and carried him to work, which is what I have countless photos and videos of them both doing. Anas proudly attended my university classes, tending to Ibrahim with patience and devotion while he was away.
These memories have now become unbeatable treasures. When absence becomes too difficult to bear, Ibrahim can turn to his father’s loving memory. Through the moments that were captured before the war, he can still see his father’s smile, hear his laughter, and sense his presence.
Malik was born without his father, though. He lacks any photos, videos, or instances in which his father’s face meets his eyes. Only stories can attempt to fill the void that only stories can fill. My heart gets a little more broken every time I see Ibrahim’s photos of his father. Because Malik’s heirloom is empty, not just because Anas is gone.
How will he find his father’s innocence to be true? Without even a single memory to hold on, how will he develop resilience? I’ll explain to him, of course, how Anas had a dream about holding him and had envisioned a bright future for him even before he was born. However, a father’s tangible comfort can be replaced by the warmth of his voice, his hand, or his voice.
Not a single thing stands out in our case. It is a component of a larger reality that thousands of children in Gaza experience. Without the most fundamental right, which is to remember the people who brought them into this world, children who were born orphans or lost their parents or parents in their early years. These are more than just personal stories; they are also a collective wound that gets worse day by day. Israeli occupation also robs future generations of their memory, connection, and even a fleeting moment of their existence.
Such simple things, which are taken for granted elsewhere, are beyond the reach of so many children here. These children are raised with fragments, stories that have been passed down to fill the gaps left by their parents.
I have the duties of caring for children, keeping a memory, and being a mother and a father. Despite the genocide and their father’s passing, I work several jobs to provide for them and try to give them a chance of a happy childhood.
I weave a story powerful enough to overcome the absence, making Malik’s bond with his father through writing. Despite my stories, I am aware that he will never understand what it’s like to hear Anas laugh or feel his embrace.
This genocidal war conceals its cruelty by killing people and erasing our memories. It makes us fight for memory just as hard as we fight for survival. Memory must be crafted, pieced together from stories, for children like Malik to stop their parents’ lives from being erased.
I’m writing this story to preserve what I can for my sons, not to drown in grief. Writing is a form of resistance in a time when we are silenced and erased.
Perhaps Malik will feel a connection to his father as a result of these words. They might inspire others to take action to stop massacres that cause trouble for children like my son without a parent.
Source: Aljazeera
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