Fishing for Mermaids

Alesha

*Trigger warning: This story contains violence and war imagery. Reader discretion is advised.*

An explosion shook us from our desks. Sirens wailed and our teacher panicked. "Remember how we evacuate," she quivered, but her words were lost on us. We ran out to the courtyard and saw black smoke. An airstrike.

The sky was black and grey with smoke, streaked in white trails of falling explosives, and from the rooftops, Hamas gunmen shot rockets into the air. A friend of mine from class, a boy named Hassan, stood beside me. Our teacher motioned for us to stand together by the mosaic crescent and star on the school wall. Not many of us had stayed.

"I didn't know they'd come so soon," Hassan said. A few days earlier the Israeli military passed out leaflets in the street, asking us to evacuate our homes. "Those who fail to comply with the instructions will endanger their lives and the lives of their families. Beware," they read. But Baba had refused. "Gaza is our home. We stay."

A piercing whistle cut the sky above us, and I looked heavenward. A trail of white from a missile pointed at me, like an angry god's twisted finger. I screamed as it pummeled toward the school. My teacher pushed us from the mosaic as the missile struck the back play yard. The younger children usually gathered there for evacuations. I prayed their families chose to leave.

The explosion's pulse knocked my school off its feet, and it began to crumble into the courtyard. I watched as the first stone fell and struck my teacher's head. I screamed and fell to my knees. My hijab, now speckled with blood, lay loose around my neck. Hassan took my hand, and pulled me from the earth. "Alesha, run!" he shouted, and I prayed for Allah to give me strength to reach the gate, which swung open at Hassan's touch.

We raced down the street toward Gaza City's center where we both lived. Whistles of rockets chased us as we ran, but I imagined an ayn al-ḥasūd, the evil eye, on my back to frighten them away. The farther from our school we ran, the calmer I felt, knowing soon we'd reach the market where Baba sold the fish he caught each morning. "At the next corner," I panted to Hassan, "we will stop at the market to get my baba."

"Okay," Hassan agreed, and our pace quickened past toppled buildings and ripped walls. We couldn't stop. The whistles advanced, and so would we.

We turned the corner, and I took a breath. The market was destroyed. No signs of life, just rocks and metal signs advertising fruits and flowers and fish. I dropped Hassan's hand, and ran to the center of the intersection. My eyes darted around the mess, desperately searching for a sign of my baba. I didn't know what else to do. I called for him, "Baba," but the explosions swallowed my cry in one gulp. Nothing but the cacophony of war surrounded us.

"Alesha," Hassan said behind me. "Your baba is probably home." He took my hand again, and pushed his taqiyah back to the top of his head. Everything about him was mustahabb, commendable. "Let's check," he said.

I didn't answer him, all I wanted was to find my baba and to be with Mama again. I ran, dragging Hassan behind me.

Blind hurry, panted breaths, I didn't stop until my house was in sight. "Mama! Baba!" I screamed as we sped into the square. Mama peeked out of the doorway, and yelled my name. I let go of Hassan's hand and pushed myself to speed my feet, until I reached the house.

I collapsed into Mama's arms. My muscles pulsed in exhaustion, my heart the most fatigued of all. The words "is Baba home" were forming in my mouth when I saw Mama's face. Her jaw fell from her as an evil whistle thrashed in my ears. A burst of breaking earth drowned me in a riptide of noise.

I flew into the house, whose windows shattered with the pulse of death. My ears rang. I pushed myself to my feet, dizzy. Through blurred vision, I saw Mama beside me on the floor, her black hijab wet with blood, dripping from her hairline. I shook her, and her eyes fluttered open. "Mama, are you okay?"

"Yes, my love. Are you hurt?"

I checked my body. "No. Where is Hassan?" Before she could answer, I was already on my feet, darting toward the door.

"Alesha, no!"

But it was too late. I had already seen him.

Charred skin. A missing leg. Hassan lay motionless on the blackened ground, his taqiyah a few feet from him. Smoke rose and dust fell in the square. I approached my friend in silence, my ears still ringing, now so loudly I couldn't hear anything else. I lifted his cap, brushed the dust from it, and returned it to his head. Hassan means 'good' and he always was. He deserved to be found in Muhammad's likeness, mustahabb.

Mama limped to my side. The whistling stopped, as did the ringing in my ears, but the silence never felt so painful. We knelt beside him and whispered prayers into his hands. "What will I say to his family?" Mama asked when she had finished.

I thought of Hassan, dressed in white and lit with Allah's glory. It brought me some peace, until I remembered I had still not found my baba in his beloved city. "Where is Baba?" I asked.

A tear cleaned a path down her blood-stained cheek. "I don't know." I had to find him.

I ran back inside and grabbed my bicycle before my mother, still bent over Hassan's body, could stop me. I pedaled toward the beach, the only other place I thought Baba could be. His car waited in the lot, but seeing it empty left me frantic. He would have come home. He would have gone to the heart of the city he loved and stood by her side as she collapsed.

I leapt from my bicycle and ran to the beach, where a glassy pit expanded from its center. Bits of an exploded missile stuck haphazardly around it. Nearby, a bloodied body covered in a veil of sand lay face down, but I recognized the taqiyah. I helped Mama choose it for his birthday. Green, the color of Islam and Baba's soul, with gold sequined lines swirling around its sides. Baba.

I rushed to his side, and with all my might, pushed his body to face the heavens. Off the port in front of me, an Israeli gunboat neared the shore. From behind me, I heard the angry cries of Hamas filtering from the streets. But I couldn't care about their war. Baba was cold and dead in my arms. I wept, as if my soul, my faith, my love, all of me was escaping from my eyes.

Eyes. So symbolic in our religion, from the evil eye to the hamsa. But now Baba's were closed. Hassan's were closed. So many men and women and children, closed to protection. And as the last of my tears spilled from me, and as Hamas and the gunboat moved to close the gap between their front lines, I felt myself closed from protection too.

But I had to have faith.

I whispered prayers into Baba's heart, echoing Abraham's famous plea for forgiveness, words we all shared when we spoke with God. By now, I could see the men in the gunboat. I could see their faces filled with terror about realizing a young girl stood between them and Hamas. I stood from the sand and secured my hijab. I would stand with Baba.

From behind me, I heard the burst of a rocket launcher, and felt the wind push the silken veil from my shoulder. But I couldn't falter. I had to have faith my body could still stop this war.

'Alesha' means protected by God. I tried to remind myself of this as a bullet meant for counter strike ripped through my chest. I tried to remind myself of this as I fell back in the sand. I tried to remind myself of my name as the Hamas men stepped over me. A tragic casualty of war, one side would call me. A martyr to the cause, would say the other.