They cut out her tongue. First they made her sing the song ‘Mawtini’, ‘My homeland’ and the song ‘Dammi Falastini’, ‘My blood is Palestinian’. The soldiers clapped. Then they proceeded to cut out her tongue. They seared the wound with a hot blade. ‘We wouldn’t want her to die’, said one of the soldiers. Then they tied the girl to a bed post. She made a strange gurgling sound. They raped her mother, Lina, and left. The last soldier said: ‘The thing about brutality is that if you make it brutal enough nobody will believe your story. We know that from history.’

Taliah’s mother sought medical assistance for her daughter, but it took half a day to get to a doctor. She was too ashamed to mention she had been raped. She even counted herself a little lucky. The way the soldiers had raped her, was not the way you could impregnate a woman. They had thought it more humiliating to sodomize her. One soldier whispered into her ear: ‘Arab girls are famous for liking it this way.’

Lina took her daughter’s tongue to a doctor. Maybe it could be reattached. Too much time had elasped and the tongue was no longer in any condition to be reattached.The doctor told her there wasn’t much he could do for Taliah. He had never seen anything like it, but the wound wasn’t fatal and tongue tissue heals up fast. Of course, she would never regain her tongue. There is no replacement for a tongue. It took weeks before the girl was able to eat solid food, but then she got used to eating without two thirds of her tongue.

Lina told her daughter they would recreate her singing voice with AI. They had plenty of recordings of her singing. The girl wrote a note to her mum. ‘If I hear my voice I will kill myself.’ Lina scratched her idea.

Taliah is studying sign language. She writes poetry now. She is obsessed with that scene in Game of Thrones where Tyrion Lannister, her favorite character, says: ‘When you tear out a man’s tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you’re only telling the world that you fear what he might say.’

(Note: Even though this is clearly a story, I stress that this is indeed a fictional story. Story-telling is a time-tested medium through which humans process traumatic events. A story comes with a structure that allows for catharsis and emotional release. These stories are written to allow people to balance themselves when confronted with the horrors in our world. They will be bundled as ‘Love stories from Gaza’. They are essentially intended as a gift to people who value human life. All stories feature characters who love and care deeply and purely. They are written to show that love is stronger than hatred. It’s also my own way of keeping my sanity in a world that looks like it’s completely lost its moral compass, if it ever had one.)