Aftermath: when the Whole world is against you

chapter 1

---

Dear diary,

Despite every stereotype about “les enfants sans enfance”—children without childhood—saying they’re desperate and needy, being one of them has taken me to another level of feeling.
“Blood, destruction, hate.”
“Blood, destruction, hate.”
“Blood, destruction, hate.”
It’s all my mind kept playing like a broken record.
So much that I feel like banging my head with a hammer.
A feeling so strong I sense it creeping inside me,
Into every inch of my being,
Taking full control of every thought, every step I take.
My entire body begging for one and only thing...
Revenge.

How it all started, you might ask.

Thursday, October 15th, 2008.
Early afternoon.
Mother, Father, and I were chatting in the living room, expecting my brother to be home soon.
Until loud banging was heard at the main entrance.
My parents instinctively dragged me into the closet in the living room.
Meanwhile, the pounding grew stronger with every hit.
Until, at some point, the door broke. Half an army was in our living room holding my parents at gunpoint.
I heard yelling and shouting—something about a promised land and not giving up—then all went silent after a loud bang.
From there, I could hear the faint sound of the news on the television:
“Beit Lahiya elementary school bombed by the occupying forces.”
As if it couldn’t get any worse...
Now my brother was gone too.
Great.

As a 10-year-old, what could I possibly do...

—Sara.

---

Dear Diary

As a 10-year-old, what could I possibly do...

But that question has echoed in my head every single day since.

I used to dream of being a teacher. I liked the quiet, the books, the way chalk dust hung in the air like soft snow. But dreams die quickly when they’re buried under rubble and loss.

For years, I stayed silent. I stayed hidden. I mastered everything from guns to daggers to spiking drinks and learned to listen before I spoke, to read before I moved, to observe every crack in the system that turned us into ghosts in our own homes.

And now, at 24, I have become everything they feared we’d grow into.

They taught us blood.
They raised us in destruction.
They fed us hatred.
And so we learned to turn it into precision.

This time, I wasn’t in the closet hiding.
This time, I was in a  control room,  typing in codes they thought no one could ever memorize.

This time, the announcement on the television was mine to write.

"Power grids disrupted in sector five. Government surveillance tower collapsed under mysterious circumstances. No casualties reported."

They won’t know it was me. Not yet. But they’ll feel it. The fear, the uncertainty—the same way I felt it that day in 2008.

Because revenge isn’t always loud.
Sometimes it’s quiet.
Sometimes it starts with a little girl clutching her diary like a lifeline.
And ends with a woman holding a country’s secrets in the palm of her hand.

—Sara.