Leyla had told Rami multiple times to please not go back and get it for her. He went anyway. One morning she woke up in their tent and he wasn’t there. There was only a note and a dried flower, an anemone, her favorite: ‘I know how much it means to you. I will go and get it. Pure intentions are never defeated. Will be back soon.’
Leyla and Rami have been married for two years. So far they haven’t been blessed with children. They could be having some medical issue, but both have been too afraid to go for check-ups. If nothing changes they will consider adopting. Especially now, with so many orphans. At the camp they play a lot with kids who’ve lost a parent or both parents or whose parents are still alive, but they have been separated from them.
Leyla is worried sick right now. Her intestines are all tied in a knot and this time it’s not because of her raging case of dysentery. She has a bad feeling about Rami’s quest. She deeply regrets telling her husband how much the item they forgot to pack means to her.
When she saw all the pictures and videos of Israeli soldiers documenting themselves as they were looting Palestinian homes she was alarmed. It was bad to imagine how they would rummage through her things. She had seen the pictures of Israeli soldiers putting on women’s clothing. She didn’t mind that. If they were so keen on exposing themselves as juvenile thugs to the world they were even allowed to use her lingerie. She knew how much it damaged their reputation. What she could not accept, was that someone would get his dirty paws on a book her mum had made for her.
A book with letters, pictures, souvenirs. Tickets, shopping bills, drawings. Her mum had given her this painstakingly built collection the week before she died of cancer. Leyla was 11. The book is by far her most prized posessions and she doesn’t understand how she could have forgotten about it when they abandoned the apartment.
When the flyers had started raining down from the sky telling them they should evacuate to the south Leyla and Rami had started packing almost immediately. Their neighbours had taken some time to deliberate, but Rami and Leyla took the warning very seriously. If they had stayed even half a day longer she thinks she would never have forgotten about the book.
Rami has been gone for two days. All communication systems in the area have broken down, so she hasn’t heard from him. Anything could have happened to him. The simplest explanation is that he ran out of gas at some point and is now making his way back on foot.
She is angry at herself. She now realizes that her mum is alive in her. All the memories. It’s all safely stored inside. Yes, her mum spent the last months of her life making that book for her, but she doesn’t need to use it as a crutch to prop up her memories of her mum.
What makes it all even sillier is that she hasn’t opened the book in years, because it hurts way too much to look at it. Her plan was to pass the book on to her own children, to show them what their grandmother was like. But she can do that without the book. She can tell them all the stories about her mum and that will do more than the book. She can tell them about the book. She knows every page and every item in it. How could she plant the idea into her husband’s mind that it’s right for him to risk his life over this?
Leyla, a devout Catholic, prays like she’s never prayed before. Hundreds of times she goes: ‘Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come; thy will be done; on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil.’
She asks for forgiveness for every ‘evil’ thing she’s ever done. Her envy of her sister, because she always had better grades. All the times she dissed her sister for whatever imperfection she could find, just because she did better in school than Leyla. The times she didn’t return her father’s calls, because she didn’t feel like listening to the stories about his rheumatism or the tedious work he did in the garden. The time she manipulated her friends to not invite one friend to a picnic outing, because in Leyla’s eyes that friend is a snob. Rationally she knows none of this has anything to do with Rami coming back or not, but something inside her feels that if she atones for all her sins Rami will come back.
For hours she lies down on a mat practicing the spiritual practice of Ho’oponopono.
She lies down on her back and folds her hands across her chest, as if she is hugging her heart. She goes:
I am sorry.
Please forgive me.
Thank you.
I love you.
For over on end till she feels like she is glowing with a feeling she finds impossible to describe. Maybe it’s a willingness to accept whatever life has in store for her.
After four days Rami comes back. He looks even thinner than before.
He drops to his knees and throws his arms around her legs and presses her tight against him.
‘Am so sorry, am sorry. I came across a checkpoint on the way back. They took the book. They took it from me. They threw it in the dirt and made me step on it. They made me push it deeper into the dirt. At gun point.’
Leyla pulls him upwards and kisses him 20 times, 50 times, maybe 100 times.
‘It’s just a book, it’s just a book. The love I have for you, the love my mum had for me, the love I have for my mum, nothing and nobody can take that away. I am the one who should ask for your forgiveness, for thinking I could ever need anything more than to have you near me.’
(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.)
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The Confessor 