By Ali Abu Yaseen
Throughout the war, I tried to capture different human scenes through writing about them. But there were times when I felt too exhausted to write or that writing itself was futile. After all, the slaughter was ceaseless; entire families were wiped out from the civil registry every night, and destruction was relentless. Every day, dozens of houses were completely flattened, while hunger, suffering, oppression, and helplessness unfolded before everyone’s eyes, while nothing changed.
I began to feel that everything I had read and written was meaningless amid this continuing carnage. The entire universe seemed unable to stop Israel’s massacres, broadcast live on television before the whole world.
For nearly ten days, I was unable to write anything. Then one day, as I was sitting in front of the house to which I had been displaced in Deir al-Balah, I asked myself, What in the world has happened to me? How can it be that I am unable to write a single story amid these countless calamities? Or do I simply not want to write?
As I underwent this internal struggle, a good friend visited me. He sat beside me and said, “I came to check on you after hearing the news about the bombing of the house across from yours.” He was referring to the rubble scattered around us. “Man,” he added, “Get out of this area already. This is the third time they’ve bombed around you. I’m afraid the next strike will hit you.”
“The persistent survive,” I replied with the familiar proverb.
When he asked how I was doing, I shared my frustration about my writing hiatus. I felt my head was empty and found nothing to write or express. “Write about last night,” he offered. “It was a night like any other for people,” I said, “Bombing, then death. Nothing exciting for the reader. All day long, that’s the most common news: bombardment then death.”
“Listen,” he asserted, “If you want to write a truly unique story that will lift you out of your current state, go to my uncle’s wife, Umm Badr, and listen to her story. I challenge you to find a story like it! She lives near you now that they’ve been displaced from Tal al-Hawa. I’ll tell her about you and that you want to write her story. She’s a woman of few words, but I will convince her of the importance of preserving her son Badr’s story for future generations.”
“All stories are similar, my friend,” I muttered.
“But this story is one of a kind,” he stressed. “I challenge you. It will reinvigorate you to write.” “You seem very confident,” I said, intrigued. “Give me her address.”
I took the address and went to Umm Badr’s house – or rather, the storage room she and her husband had rented after their displacement from Tal al-Hawa. I arrived at the appointed time. As I sat with her, I told her that I wanted to write her story. I asked her to recount it exactly as it had happened, down to the smallest detail.
She said, “I don’t like to repeat my story, but my nephew Hamed is dear to my heart. He convinced me of the importance of recounting our story, so I will tell it to you.”
She began to narrate her story, which was unlike any other, and I present it here exactly as I heard it:
Twenty-five-year-old Badr left his home in Tal al-Hawa, near the Council of Ministers, in search of bread. Their house had been completely devoid of anything edible, and hunger had rumbled in their stomachs for days. He felt it was his duty to bring food to his parents, especially because he was their only son.
His parents tried to stop him from stepping out of the house amid the ceaseless sounds of shelling and gunfire. They had not seen a living person in the area since the day before. He told them he would not be gone for long and tried to reassure them that there was nothing to worry about, and that the sounds seemed far away. In the end, they could not stop him, and he left, not knowing where to go.
His parents waited as the minutes and hours dragged on endlessly in unbearable anticipation. Their anxiety grew as they awaited his return, and terror gripped their hearts for Badr, all the more because he was their only son. Hours ticked by, each moment agonizingly slow, accompanied by the sounds of explosions and the incessant crackle of bullets.
Umm Badr was deeply worried about her son, who had left three hours earlier and had not returned. She felt like a pendulum swinging back and forth, constantly wringing her hands. It was a total war zone outside, and his absence filled her with dread. His mere departure had been dangerous, and she had opposed it from the beginning.
“I can’t wait any longer!” She cried out to her husband. “I’m going out to look for my son. The shooting has subsided a bit. It’s my fault that I allowed him to go. I should have stopped him by force!”
Her husband exclaimed, “How will you go out? Are you crazy? Haven’t you heard the nonstop gunfire? There must be violent clashes outside. Wait until it calms down completely.”
“I will not wait!” She exclaimed back. “Shelling, gunfire, and explosions never stop. I should have prevented him from leaving, even by force. What was I thinking when I let him go? Wait for me at home. I can no longer bear his absence. I must go now. I won’t be gone for long. I’ll search the area around the house.”
Her husband grabbed her hand and tried to stop her. “Let me go out and look for him,” he insisted.
“No,” she said firmly. “I will go out. You stay here to protect the house from thieves. It seems many people left the area, and thieves are looting homes in times like these.” She pushed his hand away and left the house quickly, scanning the empty streets in every direction. Only the incessant barking of dogs could be heard. As if the place were not already horrifying enough, the dogs’ barking amplified the terror.
The Tal al-Hawa neighborhood had become a ghost town. Before the war, it had been a bustling and vibrant area, considered one of the most prestigious and beautiful parts of the Gaza Strip, with its modern buildings, universities, schools, numerous hospitals, theaters, restaurants, and shopping centers. It was like a city on its own, full of charm and life, but now it had fallen utterly silent.
The area had once been filled with songs and laughter, and the voices of vendors and children leaving school, with joy and cheer in the air. Now, those sounds had been replaced by the barking of dogs, artillery, missiles, drones, and tanks.
Umm Badr walked alone through the streets, hoping to find someone who could help her find Badr.
“Could it be that there is no one here? Are we the only ones left in Tal al-Hawa?” she wondered. But she kept walking, sometimes north, sometimes south, and all she heard was the distant barking of dogs.
She was baffled: How could everyone disappear so quickly!? The city is dead. Yes, cities have a soul, and when people leave, the city dies. people are the soul of the city..
“This isn’t the time for your empty philosophies,” she pulled herself out of her thoughts. “I should head toward the barking. They must be howling for something—perhaps a person, an animal, or something in the road. Despite my fear of dogs, I will follow that sound. Maybe I’ll find a sign of life there.”
She moved cautiously toward the area surrounding the obliterated towers for which Tal al-Hawa had been famous. There she realized that the explosions she had heard had not been in vain; even the ground was greatly damaged. The stench of dead bodies was unbearable. It was like stepping into a horror scene, especially near Al-Aqsa University.
Suddenly, she saw three bodies lying on the ground at a distance, being devoured by dogs. At first, she hesitated to approach the corpses–the dogs were large and feral–but she had a terrible suspicion that her son might be among them, especially when she noticed a pair of shoes that resembled those Badr used to wear when he left home.
Approaching slowly, she discovered that the young man lying there was wearing the same pants and shirt that Badr used to wear.
She ran toward him and screamed at the top of her lungs– a scream that seemed louder than missiles, tearing through Tal al-Hawa and breaking the terrifying silence that hung over the place: “Oh, Mother! Oh, Mother!”
She turned into a different creature, more savage than the predatory dogs themselves. Even the dogs were frightened and flinched for a moment at the intensity of her grief-stricken, furious voice and the storm of emotions carried in that sound. She ran toward Badr’s body without thinking, as a dog was devouring him, while two other dogs tearing at the flesh of the other two people.
She tried to pull her son away, but the dog attacked her, biting her hands and feet. It was a rabid dog that had grown accustomed to human flesh. She defended herself with all her might and managed to break free. Then she moved a short distance away and began searching for anything to defend herself with. She found a stick and grabbed it, ready for battle. She quickly took off her headscarf, her hair falling across her face—etched with the fiercest expression of rage and fury. She ripped the headscarf in two and tied the pieces together tightly. Then she pulled out her trousers from under her cloak, tore them in half, and tied them to the headscarf, creating a long rope. She returned to her son’s body and defied the dogs once more. She attacked them with strength, roaring like a ferocious lioness, striking them with the stick as they resisted. The dogs seemed terrified by this strange creature, screaming and growling even louder. She struck one of them again while tying her son’s foot with the makeshift rope, tightening it firmly. Then she began to drag him away from the dogs, who seemed to have had enough of the other two bodies.
But that particular dog continued to pursue its prey until Umm Badr attacked it like a fierce lioness, frightening it into retreating to its pack. Meanwhile, Umm Badr kept dragging Badr until they were far away from the dogs. “Oh, mother…” she cried our again as she embraced him and kissed his cheek: “Get up, Badr, get up, Mama, get up dear! Wake up…” But there was no response.
As she dragged her son away, Umm Badr felt an inner struggle each time she glanced back at the two corpses left behind. She felt compelled to pull them away too, not to leave them to be ravaged by death all alone in that desolation. She felt a sense of betrayal—as if she had failed two other mothers waiting for their sons, or perhaps mothers who, like her, had been abandoned by fate.
She felt the urge to go back, stepping backward and then forward again, torn between duty and fear, courage and helplessness. “I can’t leave them,” she told herself, “but I can’t leave Badr either.” Eventually, she walked on, stumbling through her tears, carrying the weight of her son and another weight of guilt pressing on her soul.
She dragged her son back toward the house, about a thousand meters away. She pulled him the whole way, the rope cutting into her shoulder, while she could hardly believe what was happening. As she walked, she would temporarily doubt, Is this really my son Badr? Then she would look at him, hug him, call out to him, and once again beg him to get up.
His entire life flashed before her eyes: the day he was born, his first cry, the first time he crawled, his first steps, and the first time he said “Mama.” She was flooded with memories of his first day of kindergarten, his graduation from university, and the girl he spoke to in secret. She looked at him and pleaded, “Get up, Badr. My son, do you know who named you Badr?”
She paused. “No, it wasn’t me, and it wasn’t your father either. It was the midwife. She looked at your face and said to me, “Wow, you have given birth to a badr; a splendid full moon, madam. Praise be to the Creator!” She even called her fellow nurses to come and see your great beauty. That’s when we decided to call you Badr.”
From that moment on, he was called Badr, even before his parents had a chance to think of another name. Whenever she remembered that day, she would recall his round face, shining eyes, and his serenity from the very beginning.
Umm Badr said she felt something strange that day, as if the pain she had not experienced at his birth had not vanished, but had hidden cleverly somewhere inside her, waiting to erupt all at once and at any given moment. It felt as though life had postponed her pain, only to return it to her twofold on a day she could have never imagined. She had convinced herself that God granted her a painless birth as a sign of mercy. But now she realized that the true pain of childbirth was not in birth, but in loss.
As she gazed at his frozen features, every pain she had not felt at his birth returned to her at once, engulfing her chest, stomach, and back in the same searing pain. It was like giving birth to Badr all over again, only this time she was delivering his absence, his loss, and his end. “Get up, my son, get up. I want to see you married. I want to rejoice in your children… but none of them should call me Grandma.” She chuckled faintly, and a song played in her mind—Farid al-Atrash’s “Life is beautiful, if only we understood it.”
She shook that voice away and muttered, What madness is this in my mind? Dragging my martyred son and singing Farid Al-Atrash?!
Blood trickled from her shoulder from the impact of the rope cut into her skin, but she felt nothing. She kept walking through the empty streets. She felt like Eve at the beginning of creation, dragging her son Abel, killed by his brother Cain… except that Badr had been killed by Israel.
She remembered how Badr used to wake up smiling in the morning and kiss her forehead. She would tease him, “Kiss me on the cheek!” And he would say, “This is the sweetest kiss for the dearest mother in the world.”
The song “Life is beautiful” invaded her mind again, suffocating her with grief, but she once again pushed it away. She looked at her son and cried out, “Oh, Mother…”
Only a few steps away from home, the song “Life is beautiful, if only we understood it” began to play again in her mind. Images of Badr flashed before her eyes in succession: preparing his school sandwiches, buying him clothes for holidays, the day he passed his high school exams, when she distributed sweets to the entire neighborhood and family. But then image of dogs biting his feet returned, and the same song returned with it. “Oh, Mother!” she cried out in a loud voice.
Danger surrounded Umm Badr from every direction as she dragged her son along. Her fear was as thick as the dust hanging in the air. Yet it was not the kind of visible fear one may experience in ordinary situations – the kind that makes one flinch or step back. This was a silent fear, like a heavy shadow pursuing her, clawing at her shoulders with invisible hands.
She could hear the whir of quadcopters overhead, like eyes suspended in the sky, watching every move. The drones circled above her like metallic creatures with unblinking eyes, tracking every inhale and exhale, every shiver, besieging her from above and from within. This constantly reminded her that she was exposed, and that death could descend upon her it had upon Badr, like a fragment falling from an unseen missile.
Umm Badr did not look up at the sky. She did not have the courage to raise her head to see what was chasing her. She kept on going, dragging her son along as if the rope holding him were tied not to her shoulder, but to her soul. Drones hovered overhead, their sharp buzz like a needle piercing her eardrum, reminding her she was not alone, yet her loneliness had never been greater. She walked inside her own bubble, a tiny circle that admitted no one but her and her son lying behind her. It was as if the entire world had been erased except for them, as if the war—with all its screams, collapsing towers, missiles and tanks—existed on another layer of reality that neither reached her nor paid attention to her.
Explosions shook the ground beneath her feet, disorienting her steps and forcing her to stumble and stoop. Shrapnel flew near and far, and fires raged in buildings as if the night had swallowed the light and turned it into ashes. But she did not look back or respond. She only heard, as if hearing belonged to another body, not her own. Different sounds reached her, but she did not react. Her body became like a molded clay, moved by some mysterious force.
The sounds of tanks – the heavy, earth-shattering clatters – were greatly pervasive. Umm Badr could hear them from a short distance, with their metallic roar grinding through the streets. They crushed roads, sidewalks, and even the air itself. Yet fear did not seep into her heart—not the kind that makes a person hide, scream, or run for their life. She was larger than fear itself, or perhaps her heart was too small to contain all that terror. She clung to only one sound: her son’s breath… which was no longer there. Everything in her mind revolved around only one thing: Badr… Badr… Badr.
She felt neither her body nor the tight rope biting into her shoulder. She felt no pain in her muscles, and her breath came in sharp, shallow gasps, like broken glass in her lungs. She felt like she was carried by a strange faith soaked in grief. The world around her was collapsing—buildings crumbling, roads tearing apart, gunfire splitting the air – but inside her, everything was still; static like a grave, or like an old womb holding her only son.
The bubble around her protected her, but it also exposed her to great danger. It shielded her from fear, because she listened only to her heart, but it also laid her bare to death because she was completely unguarded. Yet none of that mattered to her. The sky could explode, the ground could swallow the street – everything paled in comparison to the weight of the body being dragged by her.
She knew that if she stopped, she would collapse. And if that happened, she would not be able to continue dragging her son home, to the last place that could unite them, no matter how fragile or vulnerable it was. So she walked on; she couldn’t do anything else. She walked on because if she turned toward the thunderous world, even for a fleeting moment, she would scream so loudly it would split the universe in two. She walked on because she wanted to see nothing but her son, hear nothing but his name, and feel no grief but his own.
There were drones above her, explosions around her, and tanks behind her, yet her soul clung to Badr and erased everything else.
And that was her entire universe.
She reached the doorstep like a ghost, or like a dead person dragging another corpse. Her hair clung to her face, matted with blood. Her clothes were torn, and her eyes were empty. The rope slipped from her grasp, and she collapsed beside her son.
Her husband rushed out at the sound of her cries. Once he opened the door, he saw Badr lying before him. He threw himself on the lifeless body, kissed his son, then pulled himself together and embraced his wife, their tears merging. He then carried Badr inside, and together they held their son, the three of them becoming one, as if offering their lives in the hope that he would awaken from that long, deadly sleep. But it was in vain.
Then a terrible silence descended as they fixed their gazes on Badr alone. As parents, that night was as dark as a womb swallowing all light. They sat in the room where Badr used to enter every evening, place his shoes by the door, and ask, “What did you cook today, Mama?” But tonight there was no smell of food, no voice of life whatsoever. Silence sat with them on the third chair – silence heavier than the walls, clawing at their chests.
Umm Badr sat glued to the wall, her knees pressing together to keep herself from collapsing. She spent long hours recounting what had happened, she narrated the same story again and again – afraid that if she paused, she would forget the details and lose the vividness of her son’s memory. Sometimes words poured from her like a torrent, and at other times they got stuck in her throat like a large, painful stone she could not swallow. Each time she told her husband how she dragged their son, how she screamed, how she fought the dogs, his hands would tremble, and he would stare at the floor, as if searching for Badr between the tiles, or looking for the footprints from when he was a child.
They mostly took turns: she cried while he remained silent; he burst into tears while her face turned to stone. Occasionally, they both wept together, quietly, as if afraid someone might hear them and reopen their wounds. For a long time, they sat motionless, in silence. They did not turn on the light or open the window. The night stretched endlessly, as if the house saw them not as parents, but as two broken bodies that had lost part of their soul.
In the deep silence, Umm Badr placed her hand on the spot where Badr used to sit every night. “He used to sit here… here he used to laugh…” she whispered in a broken voice.
Badr’s father approached her slowly, as if afraid to touch the sorrow lest it shatter. They leaned against each other, as if trying to keep their spirits from fading.
The evening passed as such… an endless night.
Umm Badr remained in the corner, staring at the walls that had witnessed her son’s first steps and now his still face, encapsulating the war and devastation. That heavy night, filled with unspoken words, turned silence into a new language she mastered more than speech. She felt suspended between two worlds: one where she was a mother cooking and waiting for her son’s return, and another where she carried a wound that would never heal and that would haunt her for the rest of her life.
She no longer thought about sleep or sunrise; all days were the same now that Badr was gone. Still, deep in her heart, she knew his memory must not be erased, and that he must not become just a number in the long list of martyrs. As she sees it, telling his story is the only way to keep him alive, and to tell the world that there had been a human being here – with a name, face, and smile, and a mother who loves him endlessly.
She raised her head and looked toward the door from which Badr was dragged at the end. As if addressing his spirit, she whispered, “Badr, I will always carry you in my heart… and as long as I’m alive, I will keep telling your story.”
Her night ended not with an ending, but with the beginning of a long silence—a silence holding what no words could describe, except that her heart had lost its only moon, and the sky remained without a full moon called Badr.