Carry the blood besmeared flag

There was this father who was designing the Hanin monument. It had already been many things, but at last he settled on a fountain. As a history buff it looks like that monument – Barmaley – in Stalingrad with the dancing children. His daughter, Hanin, 7, died the other day because her mum got too tired of carrying her. She’d tripped already twice with two children in her arms, Raneem, 3 on one arm and Hanin on the other, so she told Hanin she had to run on her own. Schrapnel caught up with Hanin, an aspiring ballet dancer, before the family could jump into the ditch of an unfinished road. It caught her in the left shoulder blade, cut through upwards so that her head was holding on only by a flap. When he hears what’s happened to this little neighbour, a seventeen year old boy jokes: ‘The IOF says it’s put us on a very restrictive diet out of humanitarian reasons. When kids are lighter their parents can carry them more easily towards less targeted areas. It also makes the adults fitter and faster.’

The plans the father drew up are currently in the pocket of a former English teacher, Sumaya. She got them off the corpse of a former taxi driver who got them off the corpse of the father.

The plans have become like the standard of regiment or the eagle of a Roman legion. People in the area know about it and they are all ready to carry them on their body in the event that Sumaya falls. Which is likely since now that she doesn’t teach anymore she uses her English skills to do online calls with medical specialists to assist during complicated surgeries. She sleeps at a hospital so her chances are not good. The 17 year old boy who refuses to use his name, because he’s already dead anyway, he says, is next in line. There’s a waiting list to carry the blood besmeared flag.

The day there will be a Hanin fountain in Gaza will be proof of the total triumph of love over barbarism.