Now, usually fairy tales are told from far away, of long ago peoples and long ago worlds, where we can receive them from the safety of our lives here, so far away from the agonies and ecstasies of those unlucky fairytale people, mired in and love and death and despair, twists of fate, villians and heroes, magic of all kinds. But today, the fairy tale I pass onto you is close, too close for us to close the pages and fall asleep happily filled up with the struggles of long ago. No, this fairytale, about a very special little girl named Ayah, begins in the here and now, in a beautiful land full of olive trees and open skies, called Palestine.
Ayah and Baba and Amma Tamseel walked in the mornings from their home to the street market, where Tamseel ran a hair salon that opened 8am sharp, Monday through Saturday. Of course, being Tamseel’s niece, Ayah always had freshly cut hair in any style she could dream of; the latest being thick bangs hanging to the tiptop of her dark eyebrows, so that she was perpetually blowing up toward the tickle of fringe. The schedule was this: hot coffee and breakfast, change clothing, double-check her mermaid earrings were securely in place, kiss Grecko and Homad- her cats- goodbye if she could find them, and walk to the salon. Say goodbye to Amma Tamseel, and Baba walked Ayah to her school, where he left her with a wink and tug on his long, greying beard.
Ayah was the oldest daughter. Her parents had wanted a large family, but after Ayah’s little brother was born six years ago, when Ayah was three, no more babies came. Perhaps no more would, but her parents seemed happy with Zain and Ayah. Baba worked in Jerusalem as a taxi driver, and Mama worked from a room specially built in their home, where she made traditional Palestinian dresses and keffiyehs like the dark blue one Baba wore wrapped around his head, where inside was stitched, in tiny red thread, words from her mother’s worn fingertips: “ Alhamdullilah “. Ayah found it very satisfying how Baba’s bread and his wrap both reached the same distance above and below Baba’s face.
Ayah came to school late this particular October morning. The wind had blown so fiercely that Muhammad Abbo’s stand of fabrics had blown over, sending the small brightly colored bodies of cotton skittering down the market street, and Baba, Tashi and Ayah had ran here and there, grabbing and shoving them into their chests, as many as they could rescue to bring back to Muhammad Abbo, who had a bad leg from the hard time at the checkpoint Beit Hanoun, when he had not been allowed to cross over from Gaza into the West Bank, where he worked at the time as a plumber. Muhammad Abbo was not grateful for their help, as Ayah noticed, but this did not seem to bother Tashi or Baba, who both said that Muhammad Abbo had claimed many lives in his one, and thus his body was too full of stories, making him grumpy and tired.
So Ayah had arrived late to school, and because she had arrived late, she did not see Hayah Habernash who taught English in the garden when the weather permitted, students sitting in rows on many-colored blankets, Habernash on a bench with her fingers perpetually pushing glasses back up her nose, and because she did not see Habernash standing at the door with her bag of books and papers, Ayah did not head toward the garden, and because she did not head toward the garden, she was alone when the bombs began to explode.
What happened was this: Ayah entered her classroom and saw that no one was present. She went to the far right wall where she might have checked the calendar or looked at the art from the weekend class, if she had not been slapped by a giant hand from the sky into the floor and then covered with dirt and tiny pieces of paper and wood and smoke that hurt her nose and her chest. At least, that is how it felt to Ayah. She lay silently, not moving, and looked her large brown eyes to the right, and then to the left. She saw her classroom, mostly the same with art, charts, tables and chairs, but right in front of her, where perhaps the class calendar had hung, there was a part of the wall that bent inward, and in the centre of that inward bending, there was a hole, through which Ayah could make out the sky, smoke, and something purple.
A banner that had hung along the top of this wall was hanging to the floor, and the lines of Arabic that had proclaimed ‘A School For Our Future’ now only read, ‘ Our Future'.
Somewhere not far, there was a loud boom, and Ayah began to cry. ‘Mama’, she called. ‘Baba!’ She knew they were not there, but it was comforting to say their names, so she called again, “Mama, Baba!” This time, her throat closed around thorns, and she choked and coughed and sat up and vomited. After this, she slowly stood. Inside the smoke, through the hole in the wall, voices curled and unfurled, high and hysterical. “Help! My leg! Help! My child, my child, where are you?! Oh Allah, your will be done!”
Ayah took one step forward, and another, and lifted her leg. She put her leg over a large block, and sat for a moment, panting. She pulled her other leg over the block. Now she was on the outside of the classroom, facing the garden, or where the garden had been. To the left of the used-to-be garden, there was a small building that looked as if nothing had happened differently this October day, as if Ayah was being silly standing there covered in dust, bleeding from her left leg, doing nothing normal at all like learning English or telling her class about her weekend, where Mama had sewn her a new dress for her coming birthday, or where Zain had eaten the entire container of Mama’s cookies, and had to memorize a passage about stealing from the Quoran, or where her Horan had been so cute on the patio that Baba had gave her the camera to take a photo of his fluffy, orange belly splayed in the sun.
No, Ayah was standing looking at something she understood in shapes, objects, and colors and numbers: round shoes, one finger, rectangle table in dark dirt pile, hajibi red one two three hajibi together in dark dirt pile, triangle hands, small rolling circle mouth. Then the sounds, which were arrows coming to and from the shapes and colors. Horrible sounds, sounds which Ayah had never heard, and which I hope you never hear, for everyone who hears this sound in their body also hears it in their heart, and their hearts are forever wounded by these sounds, making life- which I’m sure you know, can be hard- harder even still.
As she stood, Ayah’s entire body shook, so that she sat down hard on the ground. Her feet shook, her legs jerked, her stomach trembled, her chin and teeth chattered, and there was a whining sound in her ears like the violin the strange man played near the vegetable stand. I am sure you might have guessed that Ayah’s classmates and teacher had been hurt, and this is right. You might not have guessed that half of them were dead, and Ayah was realizing this, and being only a very young girl, she thought perhaps she was in a dream, a nightmare, some kind of state that happened to people but that she, Ayah, being so young, simply hadn’t experienced before. There were many weird things like that in life, that are normal for adults, but that children don’t know about, most of which Ayah could sense but not name or know.
Ayah wanted her Mama and Baba so badly that her stomach hurt wanting them. She wanted them so badly that despite her fear, confusion, pain, and loneliness, she stood and began to walk away from the shapes and voices, and toward the market, where beyond, lay her home.
Along the market street, there were people standing and pointing, people crying, people covering their faces with dress and bending over, people holding babies and children, people running. The market itself was exactly the same as it had been an hour ago, when Ayah, Baba and Amma Tanseel had ran to catch the fabric swatches of Muhammad Abbo. No one looked at Ayah, or noticed her.
Ayah walked to her own home, and I am very sorry that I have to tell you this part, of course not as sorry as I am that it happened, but still, it’s very sad to deliver such awful news, but Ayah’s house had been bombed, and in fact, her Mama and her little brother Zain were both dead, inside the remains of their home.
Ayah was only a girl of nine years old, and she had lost her family. When Ayah turned to walk to her Aama Tanseel’s home, she had given up calling her Mama and Zain, given up calling her cats, and now determined to find out where and how her Baba was.
Ayah loved three things most in life: stories, the Gaza shore, and her family. She did not have her family in this moment, and so she did two things: she pulled out from her pocket the miniature, hand-illustrated book she had written about a mermaid and held it in her right hand, and she headed toward the ocean. Ayah’s Baba had taught her that we write and what we read makes meaning of our own lives, and lives taken or lost or simply gone. This is actual magic, which many people will try to say does not exist, when it clearly does, as anyone who has ever seen the Northern lights, a herd of wild horses on the beach, a Venus flytrap, a newborn baby, bird murmuration, spontaneous healing or Pi in snowflakes, knows. However, unfortunately, dark magic also exists, such as black holes, lava, plagues, and bombs.
This fairytale is dedicated to the children of Gaza.
Any paid subscriptions I receive when I post parts of this fairytale will be donated to Medical Aid for Palestinians ( MAP ). Read about the organization here. I will provide proof of donations with screenshots.
Very powerful.
I hate to have to like this, thank you for taking the time.