‘It tickles, mama!’
Samir giggles. Rahma has written Samir on his forehead, thirty times on each arm, at least fifty times on each leg, twice on every finger. Even his tiny toes she didn’t skip. In tiny little letters, there it is. Samir. She even managed to make every letter look that way that a reader instantly knows: whoever wrote this, formed every letter as if she was gently hugging the ink. Samir, Samir, Samir, everywhere Samir.

She’s done the same to her own body. Everywhere she could reach she has written: ‘Rahma, mother of Samir. Please bury us together.’ She couldn’t add the burial request on her son’s body. Not because there isn’t enough space. It’s just too morbid for her to handle. Even now. Even for her, after everything she has endured. Samir is too young to write, so Samir has his name countless times on his back, but Rahma’s back is nameless.

Every night they sleep tightly together in the smallest room of their apartment. Rahma knows it makes no sense, but she feels a bit safer there.

Her trick will work. The rescue workers will pick up pieces of Samir tomorrow. His body and spirit that she’s been nurturing for five years, with food, with stories, with caresses, with songs, with jokes, with gentle teasing, with soothing sounds when he had a fever, with rubs over his tummy when he was nauseaus, that same body and that same spirit will be separated by Israeli bombs, supplied by the US. Dropped by people who have never seen Samir, will never see Samir, doesn’t care who Samir is.

Not the people who made the bomb, nor those who shipped the bomb or attached the bomb to a jet or the one dropping the bomb will ever care about what will happen to Samir. Though some of them know full what this type of bomb does to a human body.

Still, with his name painted all over his skin, they will be able to identify the remains. They will also find pieces of her and her request will be honored.

But what does a mother do on what she feels is the last night she will spend together with her only son? A 5 year old who has some understanding of what is going on, but can’t imagine what it really means, the real consequences of it.

He has asked why the world wants them to die. The answer is complex, but she reduces it to: ‘We don’t have the money for anyone to care.’ He accepts that.

Samir asks if they will have full bodies again in heaven. She says yes.

He asks how they will find each other.

She says: ‘We will arrive together.’

That’s the point where he is most sceptical and he always squeezes her hand harder.

She says: ‘There is only one entrance to the new place, the better place, and we will arrive there together, so you don’t have to worry, we can’t miss each other.’

Samir asks her to tell him his favorite anecdote. The time grandfather was snoring in his comfortable chair and how Samir had cut his beard with his tiny little yellow scissors, just the right size for his little hands. How everyone had laughed and how grandfather had cursed when he finally caught a glimpse of himself in a mirror. This story always made Samir laugh and he wanted every detail of the story repeated ten times. ‘And grandfather was really mad at me then?’

‘Yes, for a minute or so, yes.’

‘And then he wasn’t anymore?’

‘No, he missed his beard and he called you a little scoundrel, but then he laughed harder than all of us.’

‘Why did he miss his beard?’

‘Because it made him look like Sean Connery. At least he thought so.’

‘And who is Zan Konri?’

‘A famous actor. He is dead now.’

‘And he is together with grandfather now?’

‘Yes.’

‘Because they have the same beard?’

‘No, because they were both good people. I think. I hope.’

Neither of them wanted to fall asleep on their last night, but Rahma knew it was better to be asleep when it happened, so she started running her fingers through her little boy’s hair and told a fairy tale extra slowly. This always made Samir fall asleep.

For the next hour or so she studied every little square milimeter of her little boy’s face. As if storing his features in her mind would make the boy immortal.

When the bomb hit, thousands of Israelis were already up or still up, typing furiously on their keyboards, demanding of people on X to acknowledge that the most terrible thing in the world right now was that an Iranian missile had burned some cars in Tel Aviv and that their kids were sleeping deep underground under thick blankets in a shelter. And if any Gazans were dying it was either fake Pallywood or well deserved for not building shelters.

They didn’t understand why people didn’t agree and didn’t cry over what the missile did to Tel Aviv and why people did cry when some British surgeon, called Catherine, talked of a mum on her operation table, with no legs, only one eye, demanding to be brought back to her bombed out apartment, yelling, as she was bleeding out:

‘We have to arrive together. I promised Samir! We have to arrive together!’