A young girl stands in front of the room’s door, her gaze fixated on the disarray within. As she was completely shocked, she turned her gaze all around, lost in thought and silent…
Silence hangs heavy, while the noise of unfamiliar and eerie men fills the air. Questions bombard her, strange suspicions and doubts swirling around, as men question her relentlessly. A man flicks his cigarette to the ground, on the very floor of her home, her mother’s home, and then he crushes it underfoot. She looks at him, her expression a mix of astonishment and silence.

One of the men leads her away into the unknown, a place she neither knows nor comprehends – whether it’s underground or beyond the sun. She returns to the darkness, and the call to Al-Fajr prayer of the mosque imam reminds her that it is morning time; she has lost track of time ever since she stood before that room’s door.

She searches for her cat, going, returning, and walking. She’s asked many odd and suspicious questions. Weeks turn into months of endless questions, strange men, and cigarettes stomped upon. A gun is right before her eyes, yet she doesn’t choose to steal it. Instead, she opts for walking, silence, and coldness. Everything around her, with her, and about her becomes shared among everyone – in the corridors of the courts, on the city streets, in the interrogation rooms, and the investigator’s car, and even in the houses of relatives. Everything becomes, shared.

She travels, then returns, and the passage of time takes her along with it. Her thoughts, dreams, visions, and sights fade away. She boards a plane and prepares to board another. Two planes, and she hears the call to prayer once more, after losing track of time, her watch, and her words. She has lost her room, her bed, her cat, and her sleep. She remains there, in complete astonishment and silence, standing before her room’s door.

July 8, 2022:

– When did you leave the house? When did you return? 

– I left at 9:30 pm and returned at 11:30 pm.

– Did you see anyone on the stairs when you were coming down?

–  I don’t remember, I can’t recall.

– Why did you leave your mother alone at home and come back so late? 

– We agreed to go shopping together because it’s Eid night. I left early because she was tired – she was fasting that day – thinking she would catch up with me later.

And today, after months and countless nights of questions, strange men, and cigarettes crushed underfoot, she still hasn’t caught up with me. Instead, she preceded me to the heavens through a brutal and ruthless act. She didn’t hear my cries, screaming in terror when I returned home, she didn’t hear my screams, or maybe she did. She didn’t make our favorite breakfast or our special coffee. I lost the coffee, the breakfast, the screams, and I lost my mother on Eid night.

My mother was killed on that night, by the hands of a child not yet 16 years old and his 18-year-old friend, with a plan hatched by a boy under the age of 13. They were discovered after suspicions were cast upon me on that night. I am the daughter who was orphaned just now, deprived of her mother’s presence in a matter of seconds and lost her father a year and a half ago. Suspected as she stands before the room’s door!
Whenever I recall those words and moments, my heart aches with fear, anger, and pain. I try to believe, but what could a human mind or heart believe? I paid the price of that Eid night with my entire life, my mind, my heart, my dreams, and my hopes… my everything. I almost feel like I’ve lost my memory from the sheer humiliation and insults I heard and lived during those moments. My life, and my right to live it as I dreamt of, was raped.
The sunny house, the smell of my mother’s coffee, a cat resting her head safely on my feet, a warm fireplace always lit, a bed where I could cry whenever I wanted, and my mother’s comforting embrace where I used to escape the noise of the world.

September 12, 2020

My phone rings as I stand in the pharmacy, getting medicine for my father. I answer: 

– Hello.

– Are you alone, or is someone with you? 

I pause for a moment and reply,

– I’m alone.

– Well, I don’t know what to tell you, my dear. Your father passed away.

I was often “alone” dear uncle, and my recently deceased father has walked a long road. The hospital corridor, the quiet of death, and the loud of grief. Where I walked back and forth, crying, praying, and contemplating. How would I tell my siblings, who were abroad, that our father had passed away? He was defeated by COVID-19, or was it fear and isolation in the quarantine room on the eighth floor of the hospital that had him defeated?
Oh God! I’m the 24-years-old girl who lived her days and nights for many years next to her father and mother, without her siblings’ nights, talks, and support; how would my life be without a father? How would life be without the TV’s sound at night, my brother and I racing to the door when hearing the voice of his keys to see what gifts my father had brought for us. Before his death, I had promised him to go together to the park and eat ice cream, I promised myself to succeed so that my father could be proud of me, as well as my mother. To whom would I dedicate my success when I achieve it? Who would cry for me, and who would wait for me when I return? Who would bring me Jalab during Ramadan? All of that raced in my mind, as I was alone in the hospital corridor.

November 16, 2013

My father, my mother, my sister, and I, after witnessing fighting and confrontations in an area outside the city that we thought was safe and turned out to be otherwise, my brothers put us on a minibus filled with people fleeing just like us, heading to an unknown destination, without the chance to bid them farewell, or to know, where the days would take them far away from us? Confusion and helplessness clouded my parents’ faces as my brothers’ destiny was unknown, a separation to minimize losses and ensure survival was the goal at that moment. It was the first break in my family’s heart, and the first experience of alienation, loneliness, loss, and scattering for us.

I dreamt of growing up to call my brother, have him come to me, and return together to our home. I dreamt of having someone to protect me and lean on when life would let me down.  I grew up, and life let me down, and I became the only one from my family living in the city, with nothing to own or rely on.

But it’s God, God is always with me in all of my difficult times, the only support I had when I was alone. His name was my first and last prayer, whether in the minibus, in the hospital’s corridor, or at the room’s door; in the investigator’s car, during the interrogation room, and at my mother’s and father’s graves, where I accompanied them to their final rest, I screamed to reach God’s seventh heaven. My broken heart’s voice surpassed all barriers between me and Him. I was confident that He heard me and that He would save me… I had absolute faith, bordering on surrender, to Him. Even today, I am surrendered to God and to everything He grants me, and I believe in Him wholeheartedly.

After the death of your parents, all the world’s troubles and hardships fall before you, and all the thresholds of pain reach up to numbness; leaving only the pain of their loss and absence at your sight. You rise above all your losses and heartbreaks. You become locked down with the memories you shared with them. You long to laugh and be well, to be the spoiled child, but you grow up. You grow up rapidly when you lose them, and your dreams get limited to “nuts and sugar sandwich” from your mother’s hands, and a drive to the pool riding behind your father on a motorcycle. And when death comes, love becomes clear to you from those around you. After these losses, you become grateful. Thankful to all the ears that listened to your cries, and held you firm as you lost your ability to stand, finding solace in every hand that embraced you in moments of sorrow, the kisses that were painted on your forehead, and hands out of love and friendship; you become grateful to the houses that had their doors opened to you along with your grief, to your friends that respected all your desires to speak and be silent and listened to you anyways, cried for your cries and sat next to you to calm you down, to all of them that loved you after you lost your desire to live, they would always try to gather up your scattered pieces, and revive you the old you, the one you were before all these loses, you fall in love with the idea of living each moment with them fully because you’re scared to lose them at any moment, and live with them truly, and you thank God because He was always there, and for sending those who did all they did for you.

I want the world to know that my mother was killed with injustice on Eid night, and my father died because of the coronavirus, fear, and isolation. About my brothers who were separated from their parents for many years all because of the war that killed their dreams, youth, and their right to live within the embrace of their mother and father, and that I truly, honestly, and completely love them, always, and forever.

For all those, that words cannot help me to tell them, how grateful I am to them and how much I love them. You are the ones who love the old me, I am the young girl who stands before the room’s door.