It’s burnt around the edges, but all the text has been preserved. Rania wrote it on the back of one of their wedding pictures. ‘Soul of my Soul, my dearest Tamer, in your eyes I have found gravity. If not for you I would still be thirsty in the world’s most abundant oasis. Thanks to you I shall not want, I shall not lack in the most barren of places. There is no hardship you do not make lighter. There is no good fortune you do not make more joyful. I pledge my eternal love to you, my Tamer, your Rania.’

Their apartment was bombed while he was helping out at a soup kitchen in town. Cutting vegetables of often very questionable quality.

He hates himself for not staying with her. Perhaps he would have felt it coming. Perhaps he would have dragged her out. They would have seen their apartment and all their belongings blown to pieces, but she would be alive. She and the four months old baby growing inside her. He was helping at a soup kitchen, because at the end of a shift he could bring a generous portion of relatively nutritious food home to his pregnant wife.

She was alive when she arrived at the hospital. She had the picture clenched to her fingers, some of her skin was stuck on it. The fire from the blast had made her face almost unrecognizable, but Tamer looked into her eyes and to him it was as though there was not a scratch on her. She was not able to speak, she didn’t move, she struggled to open her eyes from time to time to meet his eyes. There was no spot on her body that felt ok to touch, too many burns. All he could do was kiss her forehead.

It was a terrible day, with many wounded overflowing the hospital, so she received only some basic paliative care. Even at the best equipped hospital in the world her chances of survival would have been minimal. Few people are ever hit by white phosphorus and live to tell the tale.

He was sort of grateful when she passed. It took about 25 minutes from the moment of the strike.

To keep from going mad he reminded himself of her instructions. She had often told him: ‘If I die only ever ask yourself: what would Rania want me to do next?’ This stopped his fantasies of somehow slipping into Israel and knifing the first Israeli adult he encountered.

He now not only helped at the soup kitchen, but also slept there. He hated it whenever they ran out of work for him, his hands had to stay busy. After two weeks he heard of a journalist who needed a driver for a risky job. The journalist wanted to get as close as possible to one of the IDF’s ad hoc prison camps set up in remote areas. Tamer sought out the journalist and immediately volunteered. They went in an old Hyundai, one of the most popular car brands in the Gaza strip.

They got very close to an IDF prison camp. So close that they got captured.

During Tamer’s interrogation his Arab speaking captor found the letter. He wanted Tamer to confess that he was a Hamas member and that he raped women, including children, on October 7th. If he didn’t confess he would tear up the letter and mix it through the food of the guard dogs.

Tamer remembered Rania’s words. What would she want him to do?

That night some guard dog may have ended up with some cramps, because of ingesting a photograph.

They kept the journalist, but after four days released Tamer. He had to walk back to town.

All the hours trudging back on no food and no water he wondered what Rania would want him to do.

The answer was always the same: make yourself useful.

As soon as he arrived back at the soup kitchen, he asked for pen and paper and rewrote Rania’s letter from memory and pocketed it. He briefly considered getting it tattoed, but he decided this went against Islam’s teachings for too many reasons. It would be haram.

He showed the letter to an ancient looking retired school principle. The old man remembered picking oranges in Jaffa at the time of the mandate.

‘To have received such love from such a pure woman should give you everything you could ever ask for to do great things in this world.’

For three days and three nights Tamer pressed the letter to his heart and asked: ‘What do you want me to do, Rania? What do you want me to do?’ Tears streaming down his cheeks in a slow, but steady flow.

On the fourth night he heard a little girl cry. He was sleeping on the ground of an indoor basketball court with 30 other people. The mother was trying to calm her down, but was too angry to calm her child. It takes a calm parent to calm a child. He sat up and made funny faces and eventually the little girl smiled.

That’s where he got his idea for a puppet theatre. The stories he acts out with his hand puppets are often very similar. A princess is kidnapped by a fire breathing dragon, but the dragon is very stupid and a prince always tricks him with the silliest of ruses and saves the princess. The kids love it, because they always know what is going to happen, before the dragon ever puts two and two together.

Tamer doesn’t get a proper salary for his work, he wanders around the Gaza strip with his puppet theatre strapped to his back, but he gets enough food from grateful parents and he always gets a place to sleep when he tells people what he does.

Sometimes someone will say something like: ‘But my dear young man, how do you hope to build a life like this?’

And Tamer beats his breast pocket, where he keeps the letter and goes: ‘The laughter of the children and the approving looks from above my wife throws me are all the reward I need.’