The EID al-Fitr is supposed to be a time filled with joy and celebration. Children should run in new clothes, laugh, collect Eidiya (Eid Money The Grown-Ups distributed) and visited parents.
The houses must be filled with the aroma of Maamoul and Kaak, traditional Eid cookies and the streets should be alive with rallies and celebrations.
But in Gaza, it is a period of sorrow. The air is thick of dust of the rubble of the destroyed buildings, and the sound of the bombing does not expect.
Instead of joyful meetings, families sit among the ruins, crying their loved ones.
Many of us are hungry, barely clinging to life, wondering if the next bomb will fall on us. The nights are sleepless, haunted by memories and nightmares that do not fade.
It will be my first EID without my little sister, Rahaf. She was my only sister, my best friend. During the genocide, we hung on to each other, finding comfort in each other.
We spent 13 Eids together on this earth, and Rahaf was the joy of each of them. Since she could walk, she woke up before everyone else, passing through the house, announcing that she had started.
She would put her new clothes and asked me to style herself before visiting our grandmothers at home, sitting with the extended family who met there, drinking tea and eating the candies that mothers had spent days preparing.
This year, there is nothing to prepare, no place to go, no Rahaf with whom to share it.
I never thought I would lose it and I was not prepared for its absence. We have dreamed of a future where we would always be to each other to celebrate milestones, creating lives filled with art and words.
I want to see her become the artist she always dreamed of being, watching her paintings come to life and see the world recognize her talent.
We imagined the day I publish my first book. How we celebrate together, knowing that no matter where life has taken us, we would always be the greatest supporters of each other.
Rahaf was withdrawn to me on December 28.
We slept at home when, at 4 am, my uncle’s house right next to it was bombed. The explosion also destroyed our house.
Rahaf was sleeping in the room closest to my uncle’s house and was crushed.
It was the room in which I slept. We had changed places only four days before she was killed.
Since then, there has been no time to cry, no space to treat the loss. The sorrow does not care in the middle of the bombs.
How can you cure when every moment threatens to take another loved one? How can you find a way to follow when the future you are considering has been stolen?
In the middle of my own sorrow, I was reminded that there are those who understand that she kills even less than me.
While we, adults, have unbearable anxiety, children are left to navigate their own pain alone. They too have dreams interrupted by loss, by fear, by the absence of those who have made their world feel safe. My seven -year cousin Qamar recently attracted my attention to this subject.
An afternoon when I was sitting on a sofa in the house of another uncle who had taken us when our house was destroyed, Qamar came and sat next to me.
Her little hand reached out, gently touching my arm. I could say that she had thought.
“Shahd,” she started, the heavy voice of curiosity, “why are you not at home? Why isn’t that there?”
My heart jumped a beat to the simplicity of his question, but I felt like I was bringing the weight of a thousand memories that I did not know how to explain to these innocent eyes.
“Our house – it was destroyed. There was nothing left after the bombing. We lost everything – the walls, the memories and Rahaf.”
She looked at me for a moment, eyes wide: “And Rahaf, where is she?”
I knew that Qamar had been said that Rahaf had left, so his question struck me like a burst of wind.
The weight of the loss of Rahaf was impossible to put again for someone so young, especially someone like Qamar, who had known the warm laugh and the sweet spirit of Rahaf.
I closed my eyes for a moment. My voice was barely a whisper. “Rahaf is in paradise now. It was taken from us during the bombing, and we cannot bring it back.”
His face was filled with confusion and innocence. “Why did she have to go?” Why did they take it? “
My hands trembled, bringing her closer. “I don’t know, Qamar. I would like to be able to explain it to you in a way that makes sense. ”
She whispered: “I want to see her again. I miss her. “
Tears sprang in my eyes, my heart putting. “I miss her too. Each day. But she will always be with us, in our hearts. ”
At that time, I couldn’t help but wonder about the day Qamar would understand what war is doing – not just for earth, but for people. How long before she realizes only when we try to move on, the pain of loss persists as a shadow.
I don’t want her to understand these things. She is too young for the weight of this harsh reality. She should not have to feel this kind of pain and loss.
I would like to be able to take the children of Gaza and hide them in my heart to protect them from terror, fear and sorrow.
The world expects to be strong, that Sumoud (perseverance), but the emotional exhaustion of living through war and the loss leaves little room for something else.
The weight of survival without the luxury of healing is a burden. There is no closure in a genocide that continues to take place.
There is no space to cry when survival requires each ounce of force.
But we keep the love of those we have lost, keeping them alive in our memories, our words and our fight to exist.
Hope, as fragile, is an act of resistance.
He makes us look for light in the ruins, for an absence, for life beyond simple survival.
It reminds us that we are still there. And that matters.
