Hossam Madhoun in Gaza
Day 8
Sitting doing nothing with a head full of horrible scenarios. My brother in law who also took refuge at our wives’ family in Nuseirat with his wife and 2 daughters is sitting on the ground talking on the mobile, checking the safety of his brothers who took refuge at a school some 2 kilometers away from us.
He asks: ‘Where was the last bombing you heard?’
:—–
‘Are there any dead people from the bombing ?’
:—–
‘Are you away from that place now?’
:——
He puts down the mobile, everyone starts asking him, ‘Where?, what happened? Who is the target? How many dead? Are they ok, your brothers?’
‘They are ok’, Mohammed answers. The bombing was near them, targeting a house, leaving 30 persons dead, men, women, children, babies.
As they are all from Nuseirat they start to question whom it could be, the house of whom was bombed. I just sat there listening and watching.
The drone in the sky is never silent, the noise is drilling inside my head. Sound of bombing far away.
Suddenly Abeer took me out of my silence saying: ‘You were dreaming last night! You don’t know what happened?’
‘What happened?’
‘You really don’t know?’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘You had a nightmare last night’
‘Me???!! Really?’
Note: all the family sleeps on the first floor, me and my mother sleep on the second floor.
‘Yes, you did, you were screaming – mother, mother, oh my God, my mother, – Mohammed and his wife ran up thinking that something happened to your mother, you were asleep and your mother too, they tried to wake you up, but they couldn’t. You stayed asleep.’
‘I really don’t know what you are talking about.’
Anyway, no shame, this is the least that could happen to anyone in our situation.
Sound of bombing, not close but not far
After this story they all start chatting, darkness falls, we light a candle.
Hossam Almadhoun