Israel Has Wiped Out 881 Families.

Israel has wiped out 881 families.

881 bloodlines.

881.

Roadtrip

A call cuts through the solemn silence of the night, stirring you off the shallow waters of a restless sleep. You take your keys and hit the road, headed to nowhere street.

They said you’d find them beyond the crossroad, a little off to the right side of a ghost town, not too far away from an abandoned gas station. You drive for minutes, hours, days but the starless sky does not leave your side, always watching over your head.

Dust welcomes the soles of your feet on the ruins of a city that barely holds onto its name. One step at a time, you wade closer to the roaming darkness of your heart. You set camp in the middle of an empty road and start digging, for minutes, for hours, for days but the starless sky bears witness to every drop of sweat you shed. A soft breeze whispers at your ears to dig deeper, to lean in closer to the gaping hole you just made ;

it lurks in the inner corners of your mind

it glares from the inside out

it latches onto you

it crawls under your skin

it whispers

it breathes

it whispers

it drums your heart to its own beat.

You lose yourself to the melody till another voice joins it and you get lost in its slurred words and you lean in closer and you fall along with the night and you shoot for the stars and you spin against the world and you swim against the current and you run to the end of the day and you fade into twilight and you wrap your arms around the shadows, enshroud yourself into their veil and you turn your back on dawn, pull the blinds and hide away from sight, from mind, from light.

You wait and wait, till the first rays of sun close in on you ;

you hesitate to say a prayer before you think better of it. You cover your work, turn around without a goodbye, coaxing the memories to follow you back into the car, to haunt your days and nights forevermore.

As you drive back home you can almost feel it, sitting at the passenger seat, switching radio channels and tapping a tune on the board. And you don’t dare turn around for they live at the corner of your eye ; somewhere close enough to itch but far enough from reach.

And you drive away from home away from the city away from the crowd. And you lean onto the stick shift, willing your hand to become its extension. And you stare ahead onto the outstretched road, willing the scenery to snatch your soul. And you glance up at the rearview mirror, willing your reflection to become a stranger.

You drive through cities, old and new, you watch as well-made roads turn askew. You drive through rain and storms and tricky view. And when you catch the deer in the headlights, you run it through. And when it lays on your way, you drag its blood on your trail. And when the fusty smell mixes with petrichor well, you keep on driving with a body in your backseat. You keep on driving with a ghost in your passenger seat. You keep on driving with murder on your mind.

And when it’s time to take a break, you lean back on old days ; you look behind you, you look in front of you. Anywhere your eyes travel, you see the bars of a jail in time, a prison of your own making. And as the darkness seeps out of your eyes and joins the night, as it dances under the streetlights to a silent tune, as it travels over your pores and sprouts weeds that climb up your throat... You look ahead and hit the gas once more.

The ghost next to you, humming to a song you cannot hear. The deer behind you, writhing, giving its last breath. The moon overhead, glaring at you. The stars around it, teasing you. The silence you paid a hefty price for, wrapping itself over your shoulders, putting a blanket of quiet over your head.

Red lights shine blue in front of you. Red flags turn white as sheet, forgetting their color, falling like snow on either side of the road where a thousand names lay forgotten. Bloodshot eyes stare back into yours and offer you a sip. The ghost smiles with all its gleaming teeth ; it’s mouthing something, you think it’s calling you angel. You think it’s asking for a kiss. You think it’s telling you to let go of the wheel.

The ghost smiles with all its gleaming teeth, and you can see yourself trapped between them. And you can feel it as they pick at you, as they peel off your skin. As they hang your wings to the rearview mirror and you dangle into the void. As they call you their lucky charm. As you bleed on their knuckles and drain into the air vents.

The deer in the backseat has stopped fighting, and as your blood dries on their hands, they wash you off their nails and wipe away at the corners of their mouth. They gurgle the taste in their throat with water and take over the wheel.

How good it feels, to let someone else lead the way ; to wash your hands off your own fate and see it unfold as a passenger. You watch as they run you both into a wall. You watch as the curtains of night let in the blinding light. You welcome the concussion and the deafening noise. And when darkness welcomes you into its gaping maw, you trust the fall more than anything you know. And as they pull your body off the wreck, you watch shadows dancing over your head ; their mouths agape in a symphony you cannot recognize, their hands pulling at your limbs, their eyes flashing headlights. You brace yourself for the collision, you wait to join the carcass in the backseat.

It never comes.

So you sit up in bed and watch the ghost hovering around the hours between night and day ; only ever present for the price of your sleep and dreams.

So you sit up in bed and talk to the darkness and ask questions with no answers and tell stories with cliffhangers steep enough to slip back into the peaceful silence of your car on a road to nowhere.

It’s like when people say “maybe Gaza would have clean drinking water if Hamas would build that infrastructure instead of buying weapons” it’s like. Do you know anything about water resources in Gaza? The coastal aquifer was depleted in large part by *Israeli* extraction and contaminated by sewage and seawater. And the coastal waters, airspace, and borders are still controlled by Israel despite the 2005 “disengagement.” Wadi Gaza is diverted into an Israeli dam, so that water does not go to Gaza. The coastal aquifer alone is not enough to provide for the population’s needs, yet it’s all they really have access to, contributing to the over-extraction. This isn’t something Hamas could just budget for. And THIS IS THE STATUS QUO DURING “PEACE”

The use of white phosphorous in Palestine is so calculated and insidious because not only does it cause horrific, usually fatal burns but its residue in the envionrment can cause illness, birth defects, and cancers for generations afterward. Look at the Twitter account Fallujah Birth Defects (graphic) which documents defects and abnormalities so rare most medical journals don't have them. White phosphorous was dropped in Fallujah in 2004 and it's still killing Iraqi babies. What do you think it's going to do to the survivors of the Palestinian genocide.

It was not always easy, most of the time, it felt like peeling skin and reopening healing wounds. Most of the time, the stub of the missing limb would ache, as though another one would sprout at any second and pull the trigger over your head.

Some nights, you would wake up in cold sweat and start crying at the unbearable pain of twisting knives inside your ribs and an invisible force pushing at your sternum. Some nights, you would wish for Death to claim you already. 

You would be sitting in traffic amongst the crowd, staring out the window and enjoying the scenery then sudden loneliness would swarm you like a war troop, trampling you till you mingle with the soil. 

You will be thinking of eyes, nose, lips, entangled fingers and limbs like bullets spinning in the barrel of your mind till they hit the target. 

Bullseye; can’t miss with a revolver mind.

You cover your face, blocking the bleeding thoughts from spilling on the streets’ pavement. You drag the body everywhere as you send the emails, you clean the crime scene after every workday, you make up alibis for the sleepless nights and overflowing prescriptions. 

Breathe through your nose, lie through your teeth, only cry at funerals, behind closed doors and suffocating pillows. 

You embrace and hold hands, refusing to think of how it wrong it feels. You try not to think about the shape that’s molded over yours, not to think of the weight every smile bears on your face now that they’re gone. 

You want to apologize to those standing by your side. You want to tell them to wait a little longer, unsure how long that would take, unsure whether there is such a time to come.

You get up on the wrong side of the bed, theirs. Somedays, you make the coffee and add milk to it, like they used to like it. Sometimes, you eat the overly sweet desserts that they used to crave so much. 

You buy groceries and throw out the trash, you cook the meals and wash the dishes. You go to work and meet the people. You live with a ticking bomb in your core that resets every few years. You live with the constant haunting presence of a ghost in your blind spot. 

The pretense has become easier, you could almost believe in this illusion of peace. You could almost believe that the freefall would land you in their arms again. 

You look at the mirror and try to confess, you hang your head, ready for your sentence. You put your frail hands in front of you and think of how they have managed to strangle every beautiful moment. 

You practise your smiles, focus your eyes and try to hold the sputtering light in them for a few hours, just long enough to fool the passer byes. 

You twist and turn honeyed words around your tongue and pour them into eager ears. You bleed on paper for the starving beaks, put yourself on the altar and offer yourself as the scapegoat. 

You watch as they dine over your body, compliment the tenderness of the meat. Watch as they wipe their lips in satisfaction and ask for seconds. 

I can almost taste spring in this! they say, as they relish in the juice of your throbbing heart, awaiting evergreen happiness after endless misery. 

And as they savor every parcel of your being, you lay there and pray that they eat away at the flooding spring of love that won’t stop oozing from you in generous gushes, draining you like a slaughtered sheep till you stop wiggling and struggling to grab for an unreachable hand. 

And as you painstakingly stagger back up, drag your feet and protruding insides through the fields, you try and feel for the release and absence of the heavy curse named after a fantasized emotion. Every time, you trudge with dangling pockets full of hefty love that you will serve on silver platters for ravenous mouths.

And as you stumble on the bones of your predecessors, you clutch onto the featherlight belief that a home awaits your return from the battlefield, 

you cradle the hope that this time, you can grab onto their face without it turning into foam. You run your hands through their hair without it turning into sharp blades. 

You cling onto their arms without them crumbling into clods. 

You hang in the deep lake of their eyes without drowning. 

You latch onto their mouth without worry of snatching the very last breath out of their lungs.

And as you finally dare to whisper their name, you won’t be stricken by deafening silence.

And as you finally lean into the firm presence of their existence, you won’t turn into flames.

And as you finally pour all the love into its designed recipient, you will drink to your heart’s content and cease being the one feasted upon.