Riyad's hearing caught the fast whoosh that cut through the sky before he heard it contact in the distance. When the ground shook beneath him and a loud blast rolled a powerful sound wave across what felt like the entire country, he realized that a rocket had fallen. Inside the third tent, he heard the imprisoned soldier stomp his feet against the ground and squeal in delight. Before he could thunder into the space and react to the infuriating man, Farhan appeared outside the second tent, his eyebrows lowered to draw a dangerous shadow over his features. Riyad, alongside Kader, and the others hurried down to the meeting they knew would be called.
After a long phone call and their own discussion, the contact of Farhan's palms on the table sent forth a flurry of previously organized sheets and broke the conversation that occurred within the privacy of the first tent. Kader flinched in surprise at the abrupt sound. Everyone fell silent to the voice of their leader who, when he found it necessary, demanded absolute respect and compliance. This moment seemed to be one of those.
"They have detained Salam Froukh for the past years and now they've bombed the home that houses his wife and children," Farhan spoke slowly, his eyes latched onto the carpet in front of him and seething with blazing hatred. "This matter is not up for discussion. Amer, ride out to the Eastern Camp and give them our permission to fire rockets in retaliation. If we stay silent, they will only attack the homes of more imprisoned men and only our women and children will suffer. We protect our people."
With a firm nod, Amer hurried out of the tent.
"Do we have the supplies to launch rockets right now?" Kader asked.
"Supplies?" Hamza turned to him, his features pinched as if he'd suddenly smelled something that disgusted all of his senses. "When a home has just fallen on innocent women and children? I hardly think these matters are important in this moment."
Kader nodded. "I know. I only-."
Farhan interrupted him as if he hadn't even heard the unusual point made by the boy who smelled strongly of hashish. Riyad had nudged him into silence because, perhaps if he spoke again, Farhan might realize he'd been out smoking. "Gear up. All of you."
"Are they making a military advancement?" Hamza asked.
"No. We are going to help in the efforts to pull his family from beneath the rubble, but I want you to take your weapons with you. Keep them hidden beneath your clothing and only expose them if Occupational Soldiers make an appearance at the sight. Other than that, you are only citizen bystanders coming to help, understand?"
With a firm nod, all of them moved to retrieve their smaller weapons. The rifles remained in their place on the wall because guns of such large sizes could never be hidden beneath casual clothing. Riyad tucked his blades beneath the base of his shirt and slid a gun against his back as an extra precaution. But Farhan stopped him on his way out.
"You and I will catch up with them. I need to discuss something with you," he murmured in the narrow space between them. Though Farhan normally had no issue discussing matters in front of Kader and Hamza, he still waited in silence until they had departed the privacy of the tent and left him with Riyad in solitude. "What of the girl?"
"The girl?" He repeated.
"Your wife."
"What of her?" Riyad asked.
Farhan stepped past him to retrieve his own weapons, speaking quietly into the tent around them but knowing rather well how easily their voices carried through the thick material that surrounded them. "Has she spoken at all? Or has her memory returned to her?" He clarified, scanning the table for the signature weapon he always carried that was not quite as long as a normal battle sword but longer than Riyad's daggers.
He shook his head in response. "She's still as she was. It hasn't been very long so it would be unfair of us to expect that she makes a full recovery in such a short time."
"It only takes a second for her memory to return," Farhan murmured.
"We should give her time to rest and recover for now."
"She can rest and recover in her family's home."
"Why are you so rushed to get rid of her, Farhan?"
The question spoke itself into the tent of two and was met with a stillness as Riyad watched Farhan's roaming gaze slow to a stop. Slowly, he raised his fingers to his chin and turned to face the younger man who stood near the entrance. "Why are you not rushed to get rid of her? Don't soften toward the girl, Riyad. You only married her to provide housing and protection until she recovers her past. Don't make that mistake. If you attach yourself to her, you will risk your position in the Resistance."
Riyad lifted his hands defensively. "I am not softening and nothing can deter me from our mission, Farhan. I am only acting with decent humanity toward her. Sheikhy was right, you know."
"About what?"
"We don't know what she's been through or how terrible it may have been to bring her to the point she is in now, without her memory or her voice. Only something truly unbearable could have pushed her mind to a point where the only thing it could do to survive was completely forget. She's in comfort now. Let her rest for a while longer until she can tolerate the truth of her past. When that happens, I'm sure she will remember," Riyad explained, trying to keep himself from becoming distracted by the truth of her state.
Three days had passed since she'd become detached after he mentioned the bruises coloring her arms and neck. Ever since that moment, she'd been stuck in the same frozen mental state that had overcome her. When he spoke to her, she hardly reacted. She remained sat in the same place on the couch since then, refusing food or water. All day and night, Riyad found himself sitting across from the disconnected girl, his eyes silently searching in the emptiness of her unfamiliar eyes.
Farhan's voice brought an end to his momentary reflection. "Perhaps," he shrugged. "All I know is it will be better for her to remember as soon as she can. When that happens, we can return her to people who will know how to better care for her. I trust that you're accepting your role in this situation responsibly and not allowing sentiment to toy with your initial intentions, Riyad," his tone shifted to a friendly but firm warning.
Riyad nodded. "They are not. I'm careful."
"I expect nothing else from you." Riyad lowered his gaze in a firm nod but remained attentive to the way Farhan's eyes narrowed at him for a moment longer before he turned away with a passive sigh. "Gather your things and I will see you at the Froukh home as strangers, won't I?" He threw out on his way out in a simple reminder.
The afternoon sun shone brightly in the sky above Riyad while he weaved through the narrow and large streets of the town's center, making his way toward the targeted home. Around him, he saw men hurrying in the same direction from all corners of the town, but none of his friends because Farhan had been careful in planning their approach.
Everyone had to take different paths and arrive without their faces covered or their weapons evident. This would protect them in the blend of citizens around them who were not members of The Resistance that was actively hunted by Occupational Soldiers at every checkpoint, hung camera, and surveillance stops.
On his way, Riyad could not keep his thoughts from trailing back to the girl he left earlier that morning. He'd offered her daily meals, fruits, and water but she'd continued staring into the distance as if he didn't even exist around her. When he'd spent the night by the third tent, he'd gone up the next morning to find her in the same position with her eyes open in such a way he wondered if she'd even blinked. If he tried to turn her head toward him and speak to her as he'd done before, her gaze never met his.
For two hours he'd sat across from her in silence, waiting for the girl to blink, for her to drift off to sleep or react to anything around her, but she did not. If he could not see her chest rise and fall with each breath, Riyad may have thought her soul had left her days ago.
He wondered how many more days she would remain absent.
Then Riyad came to the realization that it was perhaps time to call the sheikh. He would know how to help her better than Riyad did. As he approached the street busy with working men, Riyad decided that he would drop by the man's home on his way back and bring him to the girl he'd taken under his care.
A mountain of rubble sat between two emptied and cracked apartments, extending into the center of the descending street. Men and women moved around the mess in an attempt to gather the clothing and broken furniture that had rained into public street then place them all in the open doorways of surrounding apartments. Standing on the toppled home, dozens of youth and men helped lift the rubble in search of the missing children. Riyad found Salam's wife and her young girl sitting on the staircase of the apartment across the street, dirtied with grey and black dust of the structure that had fallen on them.
The apartment building beside stood with only one half upright while the other had crumbled into its own smaller pyramid of untouched rubble. That entire family sat in the street beside the door of their tall home, their two eldest sons helping to search through the largest pile of destroyed walls and floors.
"Are there still children underneath?" Riyad asked a man standing near the base of the mess, accepting the large pieces of cement passed down from others who stretched out above him.
He nodded. "We got the middle one out, but there should be two more trapped."
"What are their ages?"
"Twelve and... three, I think."
"Two?" He repeated, lifting his eyes to scan the mess of grey concrete that rose high in front of him. Riyad reached for a larger block in front of him and carefully pulled himself up to help transfer blocks down in an attempt to clear the area and find the children still buried. Around him, younger boys reached down into tighter clearances and shouted, everyone else silencing to hear any potential responses.
They worked together to lift the larger masses, carefully transferring them down to men who stacked them in the distance. After a while, Riyad lifted himself up to wipe the sweat beginning to drip from his nose and fall onto the dust beneath him. He turned to see the mother sitting on the staircase with her daughter sleeping on her legs, her chin rested on her palm and eyes staring forward in misery. But the blood staining the cloth around her leg kept her stuck in her place with no other option but to watch men search for her unresponsive children.
Then, in the silence, a shout.
Her eyes widened.
A boy cupped his hands over his mouth and called the same phrase they'd all been screaming throughout the afternoon. "Say God is Greater!"
Silence fell over the street as everyone looked at one another in anticipation, wondering if they had all imagined the call that had come from beneath the rubble. Standing on the other side of the shorter hill, Riyad caught a glimpse of Hamza balancing a large block between his arms, refusing to place it down lest it make a loud sound that might mask another call. The children's mother continued to search from her place on the floor, her eyes desperate for a glimpse of anything.
"...is Great," a muffled shout came from a few feet to Riyad left, where three men had been unloading the rubble from its place. The woman immediately stood up, limping over as quickly as she could at the sound of her child's call.
"Waleed!" She cried out, trying to climb up even as two elder women held her back from potentially tripping over the uneven and sharp ground. "That is my son! He is under. Hurry, get him out. Waleed!"
Riyad hurried forward and, with Farhan and four other men, quickly lifted the rubble away and tossed it to those waiting on the lower ground. Soon enough, they removed a large piece that hid beneath it a bloodied foot. At the feeling of the air, the child wriggled his toes and shouted again as if they might not see him. "God is Great!" Around him, the men repeated the phrase hopefully when they reached down, carefully prying the twelve-year-old out from beneath the fallen home.
The mother's tears rolled down her cheeks at the sight of her wide-eyed and smiling boy. She extended her arms toward him. "Waleed! Thank God, my son. Come to me! Bring him!" Her voice swelled in tears as she embraced the dirtied boy on the floor, her injured leg giving out the moment he stood in front of her. "Thank God."
Everyone cheered at their embrace but a solemn air filled the space between all the applause at the arriving evening. The three-year-old still remained trapped beneath and, whereas the brother could muster enough power in his shout to be heard through the rubble and chaotic events surrounding them, no toddler could raise their voice so loudly. Nearly five hours had passed since the home fell.
"You," a hushed voice came from behind him before a shoulder collided against his back. Riyad snapped his head around to find Kader standing to his side, motioning aggressively over to the right side of the street they stood in.
When he followed his direction, Riyad only saw women lining the walls and watching hopelessly in search of the third child. An elder lady leaned on her cane and wiped tears from her eyes with a handkerchief gripped between trembling fingers. Just as Riyad began to turn back to his friend in question, he saw a younger woman approaching the site in a grey abaya and black hijab around her head. He nearly tripped on the uneven rubble beneath him when he stepped forward, squinting against the high evening sun to see her eyes scanning the mess of uncleared rubble.
Riyad's attention slipped over to Farhan who'd helped bring the young boy to his mother, but his gaze had shifted in the same direction as Kader had pointed. The smile had become replaced with a hardened attempt to control his rising emotion when he saw the girl stumbling through the crowded street. His unhappy eyes met Riyad's with a single silent warning to retrieve the girl who might just expose all of their identities.
With one large step and a measured jump, Riyad had returned to flat ground just in time to intercept the girl who quickly advanced to the fallen home. He began to speak but she moved past him, not paying a single mind to the unlabeled body that had stepped into her path. Riyad moved back and caught her, placing his hands on either sides of her arms to stabilize her in front of him. "Harakat," he whispered, noticing the multiple gazes of curious townspeople that shifted to them. "What are you doing here?"
Her eyes darted over the sight before them, wide with panic. As if she'd forgotten her inability to speak, the girl mouthed a single word but it only escaped her as a breath. Riyad held her in front of him as she tried to move again and waited as she repeated the word that drove her forward.
"Dam? You see blood?" He asked.
She shook her head and mouthed something else, her fingers moving in front of her to convey her intentions into something he might understand. The girl lifted two fingers to her eyes to scan the area around her before gripping air firmly between her tightened fists.
Riyad nodded. "We're looking, okay? But you can't be here. You have to go back-."
She refused and, when he tried to speak quietly to her so that those surrounding them so closely would not hear more than they needed to, the girl slammed her hands into his chest to shove him away from her. The suddenness of her outbreak and unexpected strength she carried made him stumble back and out of her path. Without another look, the girl moved past all the men and climbed up the smaller pile of untouched rubble belonging to the second home. He watched her drop onto her knees and begin digging, hardly seeming to notice all the questioning gazes that watched her lift the smaller pieces of cement.
"Get her out of here." Farhan ordered behind him.
Riyad followed the girl. "Harakat," he called quietly to her once he reached the base of the small pile of rubble she had sat on, busying herself digging uselessly in the emptiness. She did not reply nor seem to hear him so he climbed closer to her as everyone else returned to searching for the remaining child. "Harakat, can you hear me?"
She continued digging.
He reached out to her, softly gripping her hand to pull it away from the sharp remnants of the home that had collapsed beneath the force of the rocket's contact. "Let me take you home. This is not a place for-."
A wordless shout of frustration broke through her lips as she shoved Riyad away from her again. The contact firm enough to disrupt the balance he had on the rock beneath him. Riyad dropped painfully onto the ground still decorated in pebbles and jagged pieces of uncleaned furniture, his expression overcome by the same surprise that filled the multiple exclamations from women that surrounded him.
"Are you okay, my boy?" An older woman tried to help him up.
Riyad quickly collected himself, lifting his hand to stop the others that moved toward the girl who had turned her attention to continue digging in the rubble behind them. "Leave her be," he cleared his throat. "She only wants to help." When he looked back at her, her brows had lowered in concentration and her mouth worked with one silent word she could not stop repeating, like a broken record with nothing more to offer.
He sat on the staircase of the home beside her, keeping his eye on Harakat as he rested and the other men continued digging past her in the remains of the fallen home. Not once did she look at him nor at anyone else around her. Not once did her eyes leave the crumbled mess beneath her while she continued digging deeper into the connection between both piles, her lips uttering the same word over and over again.
After long enough, Riyad had understood her repetition.
A name. Tamim.
Riyad joined the men to help once again after he'd finished resting, tasking the older woman who'd been sitting beside him with watching over his wife. The sky had lost its earlier brightness so now it had become difficult to see between the cracks beneath them. Shadows loomed over them with the quickly arriving evening. With each passing hour, he saw the mother's heart break even more with silent tears. Once when he glanced up, he could've sworn he caught Harakat staring at the weeping mother, but by the time he realized it and turned back to her, she'd returned to digging.
"You didn't take her back," Hamza spoke from beside him, both of them digging close to one another. "Farhan will be very angry."
As he tossed another piece to the older men behind him, Riyad responded. "She'll make even more of a scene if I take her. Leave her as she is. She's not doing anything that all of us are not doing."
"He won't see it that way and you know it."
"Let's find this child first then I'll worry about him."
Hamza snorted at the reply, kicking a few rocks away with his feet. He opened his mouth and, when he heard his breath, Riyad knew he was preparing to reply when a silence quickly fell over the chatting men and comforting women, rolling over them like a wave with one source of attention. Hamza and Riyad lifted their head and turned in search of what had occurred to quiet the street but, when they heard a loud thud, realized in horror that everyone's focus had shifted to the girl—Riyad's wife.
She sat in her place, one arm extended in the air to come down roughly again over what lay across her other arm. Upon closer inspection, the dirty rag that appeared to be thrown over her arm was really a small child drowned in black and grey dust. The contact of her fist with the child's back echoed one more wave of silence over the space.
Then a sharp gasp and the blare of the child's cry.
"God is great!" Voices shouted around them.
The mother's attention snapped from her eldest son as she spun toward the sound. With trembling hands, she covered her mouth to muffle the guttural cry that broke through her lips at the sight of the stirring girl. Rising from the rubble, Harakat carried the girl carefully down toward the mother who sprinted across the street with extended hands. "My daughter," she sobbed. "My world is alive! My children are safe! Thanks be to God... thank you. Thank you. You brought my world back to life."
Harakat carefully turned the wailing girl over to her mother's arms, her eyes crinkled at their edges with a soft smile when she looked from the mother to her daughter. She nodded at the mother's cries of gratitude before stepping away to make room for all the men who quickly surrounded the coughing child.
"Let's take them to the hospital. All of them, come on!"
It was almost miraculous how quickly the street emptied around them as half of the crowd rushed to move the family toward the nearest hospitals and the others returned to their homes with reassured minds now that all children had been pulled from the rubble.
"She may have found the youngest one, but you're still not off the hook," Farhan murmured from beside Riyad as everyone began dispersing.
This time, in the movement of the separating crowd, Riyad turned to face his friend. "God brought her here to find that girl in the corners that nobody else thought to touch," he whispered, half of his tone teasing while the other believed fully in his statement.
Farhan narrowed his eyes. "See me after you take her back."
"Yes sir," Riyad spoke quietly as Farhan departed before they could be left alone in the street together. His eyes returned to the newly empty space and caught quickly onto the girl who remained near where he'd last seen her. Now, she'd shifted back to the abandoned home and held a piece of rubble between her fingers, staring onto the half-cleared pile in her usual silence.
The ground crunched beneath every footstep he took closer to her. She'd broken out of the daze she'd been stuck in with the landing of the rockets. Now, as she stood before him, Riyad knew if he spoke to her, she would hear him. "Harakat," he called out to her gently, his voice carefully coaxing her back to the moment between them.
She blinked at the sound of his approach, tears falling from her eyelashes when she closed her eyes. When he stopped beside her, Riyad saw the same heartache he'd seen in the mother's expression swelling in her features and filling her eyes with quiet tears. She pulled in a deep breath then turned to meet his gaze and, though Riyad's body filled with relief at the reaction she offered him as opposed to the days of absence he'd endured, his chest tightened at the misery overcoming her attempts to keep a neutral expression.
His gaze dipped to her lips when they parted to mouth words she had no will to translate through her movements. Tamim, she repeated the same name as before but this time there was more to the statement.
...is not here.
Tamim—she glanced over the rubble—is dead.
Riyad stifled the instinct to believe that this boy whose name she'd been repeating ever since she arrived might be her son. If he was her son, then she must have been married before and, if she was married before, then she might still be married which would make their union null. But her eyes held the same longing that he'd caught in those of the mother who'd awaited the appearance of her buried children.
"Harakat," Riyad stepped closer to her. She opened her hand as his fingers slid over her palm to remove the sharp piece of cement from her hold and toss it onto the floor in front of them. "Can I take you home?"
She lifted her head to meet his gaze, the setting sun reflecting in the moisture of her tear-filled eyes. Blinking tiredly, the girl finally nodded in response to his question and let Riyad lead her through the streets to the apartment door she'd left open.
When they got home, Riyad left her to wash his hands of the soot and dust that had covered his fingers and arms. He filled a plate with water and found her sitting on her bed with her eyes stuck on her dirtied hands. They exchanged neither a look nor a word as Riyad kneeled onto the ground in front of her and took her hands in his, beginning to wipe them down with the handkerchief he dampened with the warm water. Her attention remained on each brush of the towel that loosened and cleaned the mud on her knuckles.
"Can I ask you something?" He whispered, wiping a drop of blood from her thumb before lifting his gaze to await her response. For a moment, he was worried she hadn't heard him and had drifted off while he'd been occupied cleaning her hands. Then the girl slowly nodded. "That boy...Tamim... is he your son?"
Harakat's eyes lifted off her now clean hands to meet his. Though she'd been silent and still on the couch for the past few days, her body seemed weaker from an effort that Riyad hadn't seen her exert. Her eyelids were heavy as she parted her lips to mouth the same sentence as before. Tamim is dead.
Though part of him didn't want to know, Riyad knew that their living together would be impermissible if she really were still married to someone and her ability to stay would be compromised. "Harakat," he whispered, knowing that he could not push her on the matter regarding the boy lest she shut down again. Instead, he moved to another question. "Is our marriage valid?"
Her response was not delayed longer than a minute but the pause between his question and its answer seemed to drag on for years in Riyad's mind while he waited. His heart did not want to beat in case it drew his focus away from her reply so his entire body seemed to tense impatiently until the girl answered him. When she finally responded with a single bow of her head, nodding, Riyad released a breath.
"Do you know who I am?" He asked.
She nodded.
Riyad heart softened in relief as he held the handkerchief against her knuckles, unaware that he still gripped her hand between his fingers. He understood now that any questions he had about the scars on her arms and neck would not be received so he could not bring them up. The truth about Tamim did not shut her off in the same way but, at the moment, she was not receptive. So Riyad left the matter alone.
When he noticed the heaviness of her eyelids, Riyad pulled the handkerchief away and placed her pillows down on the head of the mattress. "You should sleep. We can eat when you wake up tomorrow." She sunk quickly into the sheets around her before he even pulled the covers over her body. Riyad hesitated when he tucked the blanket around her then peered down to find the girl staring up at him with eyes of exhaustion and sorrow.
As her eyelids slid to a close, she mouthed the same words again.
Tamim is dead.
________________
Shut it down for Palestine tomorrow.
Love you!