A sweet and smiling boy who represented his parents’ entire world now accompanies them.
Gaza strip – No child likes the sound of bombings and missiles, their ears cannot stand them. Issa Tariq al-Souri, 13, was in the same situation.
There was a time when, like other children in Gaza, he had childish worries: finishing his homework and running off to play football or meet friends. They were playing, chasing each other, or sitting around a video game console, shouting and clapping.
The complaints he and his classmates at the Sisters of the Rosary School in Gaza City related to school work, exams or an exam scheduled at the same time as sports classes.
Fleeing towards his disappearance
Issa and his parents fled their home in October, heading to the Greek Orthodox church between Zeitoun and Shujayea where they took refuge with hundreds of Christian and Muslim Palestinians who were fleeing Israeli bombardment.
Despite an international ban on targeting places of worship, Israeli forces bombed the church on October 20, killing Issa, his mother Lisa and his father Tariq. He was an only child.
Issa was a sweet, calm, well-behaved seventh grader with a beautiful smile that lit up his face that was definitely that of a child. He wasn’t a “big boss” but he was very popular with the other children in the class, always in the middle of a game or a joke.
If he was shy around his teachers and had trouble looking them straight in the eye, Issa knew how to charm when necessary.
Hoping to get a good grade on some upcoming exam or another, he would find the courage to ask the professor to make the exam as easy as possible. It is not known if he always passed, but he got good grades.
Many children mourned Issa when they learned he had been killed, especially his best friend, Amir Farah, who could not understand what it meant to have lost his close friend and companion.
For a 13-year-old, the idea that he will never see his friend again is difficult to understand.
Amir picked up his phone for weeks after learning of Issa’s death, dialing his friend’s number hoping that Issa would answer and tell him the news wasn’t true and that he hadn’t been killed.
“I won’t see Issa again. Not in the school hallways where he would run up to me during recess to ask me to do this or that during recess. I just won’t see him again,” Amir said.
He was her whole life
Issa’s mother was a kindergarten teacher at the same school and was very involved in his progress, making sure to talk to his teachers and take note of any suggestions they had for him to improve.
The two were devoted to each other and Lisa’s colleagues often said that Issa was her whole life and that she did everything she could to ensure that he grew up to be a good man.
One of her fellow teachers sadly remarked that it may have been a small comfort that the two had left this world together, as she may not have been able to bear losing her dream boy to see him become a kind and successful man.
She will be missed by Lisa’s colleagues, as will the children she taught who, over the generations, became accustomed to greeting their former kindergarten teacher in the hallways as they rushed to their upper classes.
The death of an entire family is a staggering thing, there is no one left to mourn their parents or brothers and sisters. The extended al-Souri family lost many people in that Israeli bombardment, and hearing an aunt count them all was truly heartbreaking.
On November 4, Issa’s school, Rosary Sister’s School, was also bombed.