“Fragments from a Gaza Nightmare”—fiction from Sama Hassan

A Gaza-based writer captures the intense and harrowing experiences of individuals enduring the brutal realities of genocide through a series of poignant and vivid scenes.

Sama Hassan

Translated from Arabic by Rana Asfour

 

Dogs

She grew used to sleeping outside the tent to make sure the stray dogs wouldn’t harm the children, while her imagination ran wild with a thousand images of potential assaults. Despite the heavy stick in her hand, she understood she could never shield the children from the rockets and missiles. Night after night, she clings to her stick and weeps.

Two Arms

She sits outside the tent, waiting for her absent son to return. He stays away because he cannot bear to witness her heartbreak and disappointment at the sight of his amputated arm. She who’d believed salvation lay within his wholesome embrace.

Eid Clothes

Despite knowing how poor his father was, every Eid he asked for new clothes. Days before the feast, he’d obsessively repeated the same request: It’s time to replace these old, worn-out clothes. On the morning of Eid, he finally got his wish. They swapped his tattered garments for a burial shroud.

Posterity

I fear the war will claim me, and you’ll forget all about me, he told her, his voice laced with fear while the shells fell all around them. Her hand reflexively reached for her belly, and her eyes swam towards the tattered roof of the tent. Impossible, she replied.

White Lies

Every night, before he sleeps, he asks his mother about his missing arms. Each time, she reassures him that they will grow back overnight. Once morning comes, he discovers her deceit when he sees the neighbor’s child, armless, just like him.

The Swing

As he slept against his exhausted mother’s knee each night, he dreamt of playing on a swing that would soar as far from the ground as possible.

One night, he flew far, far away.

He rose up and up, never to descend onto the earth again.

Bird

His mother always scolded him for chasing after the birds, risking his life so that she had to step in and stop him. Little did she realize that he saw himself as a bird who, one day, would fly away from this grinding war, and she wouldn’t be able to save him then.

Death Certificate

I think there is no need to hold on to the children’s birth certificates, she told her husband, her tone dripping with desperate helplessness.

He nodded in agreement, swallowing his own remorse. As the children slept, he wrote their names on their arms and pondered the sky.

Defeats

I don’t want to lose you in this crazy war. I’ve been defeated by everything else in this world, I whispered.

War leaves no room for anything, my beauty, he said. It seizes an idea before it can take shape in the mind and soul.

Pole

He was spent thinking of ways to save his children from the shelling outside their tent. Despairing of escape, he tied each child to a tent pole, sat down and waited.

Solid Back

I wish I had something solid to lean against. The tent’s flimsy fabric only increases my sense of loss, she told him as he sat facing her. He promptly changed position so that her back leaned against the solidity of his. Her smile died on her lips when a bullet ripped through the tent’s fabric, tearing a path through his back.

A Handful of Flour

When the aid trucks approach our tent, do not chase after them for flour, she warned her child. He remained silent, understanding that even if he were willing to do so for her sake and his starving little brothers, he risked suffering the same fate as his father, whose body they had brought back sprawled on the shoulders of the starved.

Lipstick

On the nights when she reflects on her elegant room in their house, now reduced to rubble in the distant city, she takes a deep breath, attempting to summon the lingering scent of the perfume her husband once cherished before tears flood her eyes. She reaches under the worn pillow resting on the floor of the tent, feeling for the familiar stick of lipstick. Then, she waits.

Love

I can’t believe our love brought us to this tent. How could you agree to consummate our marriage in this place? she whispered tearfully.

If only I knew how the homeland ended up in this camp, he answered, broken.

Dummy

Two young children were locked in a heated tug-of-war somewhere among the tents.

The first tugged to free the dummy’s hand, eager to locate the remaining parts for play.

The second was desperate to claim for burial the last remaining part of his baby sister.

Torn dress

Did the Mukhtar hand you some food or a little money when you went to his tent? he asked her when she returned.

His mother did not respond. Tears streamed down her face as she huddled quietly in the corner of their makeshift tent, painstakingly stitching together the torn cloth across the front of her worn and tattered dress.

Tent door

Close the door. The insects have feasted on our skin, he pleaded.

“No!” She responded. “Every night, when our children rise from their graves to play, they will be guided by the light of the fire in my heart and run toward it. Can’t you see how all the tents look alike?”

A Bottle of Milk

In search of a bottle of milk with which to silence her newborn’s hunger, she left him crying with other helpless infants, alongside a photo of a father killed months ago.

After a considerable distance, she finally managed to secure the milk from a truck distributing supplies to the displaced. By the time she hurried back to the tent, it had eviscerated into thick smoke.

She poured the milk out onto the ground where the tent had once been and screamed, Have you had your fill, my child?

The Embrace

Ever since his lover died in the war, he sifts through the rubble in search of the dead. When he comes across the lifeless arm of a man, he tenderly arranges it around the lifeless body of a woman, reminiscent of the way he used to embrace his beloved while strolling by the boundless sea, feeling like nothing could ever break them apart.