Kareem, 56, a bit rheumatic, is slipping on the blood. That’s one of the things he’s discovered this past year. You can break your neck wading through this liquid red life force. He can hear some whimpering in the back of the apartment. The sounds are coming from underneath an upside down bathtub. He flips it over and finds a four year old girl. She is shaking uncontrollably. She spits something out. He catches it. It’s some of her teeth. She’s ground her own teeth to pieces from stress and shock. Kareem wipes some of the blood off her lips. Other than that she has no visible injuries. That doesn’t mean she’s safe. Her ear drums can be ruptured. The blast may have impacted her internal organs, especially her lungs. Even with the protection of that bathtub she may have a severe concussion.

Kareem knows that her parents and two brothers are lying cut open in the other rooms. How can he get her out without her seeing it? He tells her: ‘Habibi, you need to keep your eyes closed and then I will take you to safety.’ The girl asks, her voice shaking as if she is in one of those vibrating massage chairs on the highest turbo speed, ‘Ttttt tt to to to ma-aa-aaa-maaa-aaa?’ Before he realizes it, he’s lied and said ‘Yes, to mama.’ The girl is too shook up to close her eyes. They are wide open. She doesn’t even blink anymore. He can’t carry her past the mangled corpses of her family. He doesn’t want that to be the last image the girl sees of her mum and dad. He asks her name.

‘L l l l l u u uuuu n aaaaaa’.

‘Good, Luna. Your mum has asked me to cover your eyes with something.’ He puts her down for a minute and takes off his shirt. He rolls it into something like a blindfold. ‘We’re playing a game. Am going to take you somewhere. And when we are there you will guess where we are and then I will remove the blindfold. Do you understand?’ The girl nods. Kareem hopes she is nodding, cause with all the trembling it’s hard to tell. He ties the T-shirt tight round her face. He’s worried he’s hurting her, but better this than confronting her with what’s in the other rooms.

He carries her in his arms. She weighs about 18 kg (about 40 pounds). Trying to estimate her weight is his own way to not take in the carnage. It doesn’t work. It’s like his eyes want to plunge him into hell by making him soak up every detail of the scene.

Her mum’s head has been sliced off, it’s hanging on by a bit of skin at the back. Whatever her belly used to hold, is lying in her lap, a heap of guts and organs. Her father is lying on top of her brothers. He was hugging them, trying to protect them. Schrapnel has peeled off his back. He’s burnt. His legs are gone. Debris has taken off the top of his head. The boys are dead too, sharp things are sticking out of their sides and their heads. One boy has lost both his eyes, they are dangling to the sides of his face. All the while Kareem is singing a lulaby to Luna, humming through the parts of the lyrics he can’t remember. Kareem is among the worst singers in the world and never sang longer than ten seconds, until now.

He is almost where the door once was, ready to hand Luna over to a fellow rescue worker. None of them has ever done this kind of work before. Kareem had a tea house before October 7th, his fellow rescue worker used to weave carpets.

There is just too much blood. Kareem loses his balance and slips. He tries to fall on his knees without letting go of Luna, but he falls awkwardly to his left side and Luna falls on top of him. In the process her blindfold comes off.

Kareem didn’t know humans can produce the sound that follows. He can only compare it to the howling of a wolf being dragged down a highway by a truck, for miles and miles, refusing to die. It seems to go on for all eternity. Kareem’s colleague lunges forward and snatches the child and runs off with her, also almost slipping in the blood.

He gets up and frantically starts searching for an intact toy to give to Luna. He even crawls on his hands and knees, all over the place. Eventually he finds a little elephant.

Kareem rushes out and finds Luna. A woman is holding her and rocking her back and forth in her lap. Kareem gives her the little elephant.

The girl takes it and stares at it.

Then growls like a wild animal and tears off the elephant’s head. Whatever material they stuff these toys with spills out.

The woman and Kareem lock eyes.

The woman says: ‘I will sow it back on, don’t worry.’

Luna misunderstands and thinks the woman can sow her mum’s head back on. She tries to drag the woman back inside.

The woman looks like she knows things.

Kareem hears himself ask: ‘Do you think Hamas has any use for an old guy like me?’