Dear Baba,

Dear Baba,

Today I woke up and could not hear your voice calling the Adhan. It was a grown-up stranger’s gruff voice instead, sifting across our broken street like unfamiliar smoke. I walked down to your bedroom to check, only to find the bed all made, the pillows smooth as if no dreams had lived there, the lights off, no one there. The cracked ceiling above your bed was still the same, the plaster falling little by little since the last shelling, but your bed was empty.

I tiptoed to the sitting room on bare feet, my toes cold against the chipped floor tiles, and there you were lying on a mattress covered in white cloth…so white it hurt my eyes to look, whiter than the little bride’s dress you got me on Jameelah’s wedding, whiter than the clouds I draw with crayons when teachers ask us to color heaven.

The grown-ups were all there: Uncle Mahmoud and Aunt Fatima and people I didn’t know with red eyes and quiet voices. They kept touching your forehead like they were checking for fever, but no one was giving you medicine, no one was calling the doctor, and I wondered why they weren’t helping you get better.

Mama sat in the corner crying, the way she cried when our cat Hurayrah died, but louder, like her chest was tearing open. I wanted to tell her you were just sleeping, that sometimes grown-ups sleep very deeply when they are tired…from carrying me on your shoulders, from teaching me to tie my shoes, from writing until dawn at your desk when the electricity came back for a few hours, from leaving home for days at a time with your camera and notebook, all for stories you said the world had to hear.

When I tried to shake you awake, Uncle Mahmoud lifted me in his arms. His hands didn’t feel like yours; they smelled like burnt wood and fuel instead of the soap you used after prayers. Someone offered me a cherry-flavored lollipop, too sweet, but I didn’t want candy. I wanted you to sit up and ask me what I dreamed about, like you did every morning while pouring milk over my cereal, before rushing out again with your bag, saying you had to tell the truth, that it was your duty.

I didn’t understand why they wouldn’t let you wake up, why they kept saying “shhh” when I called your name, why Uncle Ahmed and Uncle Hassan were carrying you on a wooden board wrapped in those white sheets like you were a present we were giving to someone. But presents are supposed to make people happy, and everyone was crying. I didn’t know who this present was for or why we had to take you outside when you didn’t like being cold.

The car ride was too long and too quiet. I pressed my face against the window watching broken buildings slide past, the jagged skeletons of houses where children once played, while grown-ups whispered words I almost understood: “Qadar,” “shaheed,” “sacrifice,” “hero,” “God’s will.” But I wanted to tell them that the better place was our kitchen table, where you drank your morning tea and let me dip my cookies in it until they were soft enough for my small teeth to bite.

At the cemetery, the ground was covered with green grass, brown sand, and grey stones with names etched into them. There was a hole in the earth that looked hungry, like it wanted to eat something. I didn’t like how everyone was standing around it, looking down into its empty mouth, while men in white caps said prayers that sounded harder than regular prayers, prayers that made my stomach feel like when I was on swings that went too high.

They lowered the wooden board into the hungry hole, and I kept waiting for you to sit up and say, “Surprise! It’s just a game!”…the way you did when we played hide and seek in our small apartment, hiding behind the wardrobe with your camera dangling from your neck. But you stayed still under the white cloth, and they started throwing dirt on top of you, handful after handful of brown earth that made soft thudding sounds like rain on our roof at night.

I wanted to jump down and brush the dirt off, to tell them that dirt was for gardens, not for Babas. You didn’t like getting dirty except when we planted tomatoes together in the little pots on our balcony, the same balcony where the glass had shattered last month from an explosion. Even then, you always washed your hands with the special soap that smelled like lemons and made bubbles between your fingers.

Uncle Mahmoud held me tighter when I tried to climb down. His chest shook like he was cold, even though the sun was warm that day…the kind of warm day when you would take me to the park to feed pigeons with pieces of bread from breakfast, push me on swings, catch me at the bottom of slides, and promise that we would always, always, always be together.

But soon there was so much dirt covering the white cloth that I couldn’t see you anymore. People were walking away like the game was finished, like we were leaving you here in this place with gray stones and hungry holes in the ground. I didn’t understand why we couldn’t take you home, why we couldn’t put you back in your warm bed with the pillow that smelled like your hair and the blanket Mama knitted with blue threads like your favorite shirt. Why I was waving at you and you weren’t waving back.

The ride home was even quieter, and our house felt different now, like all the air had leaked out, like the walls were holding their breath waiting for something that wouldn’t come: the sound of your key in the door, your voice calling, “Where’s my little star?” your footsteps in the hallway coming to find me after work with stories about your day and questions about mine.

That night Mama’s best friend, Hassouna, tucked me into bed, but her hands shook and she forgot to sing the lullaby about the moon and the jasmine flowers. I lay in the dark wondering when you would come home from wherever they took you, when you would remember that you promised to teach me how to braid my own hair, how to write my name in Arabic, and how to be brave when the world felt too big and I felt too small.

I wondered if you were cold under all that dirt, if you missed your pillow, if you knew I had saved you the last piece of bread from yesterday’s dinner, wrapped in tissue paper in my treasure box next to the seashell you gave me and the photograph of us at the beach last summer, when you taught me how to make castles from sand that would wash away with the tide but could always be built again as long as we had hands and time and each other. I wondered if you were hungry.

But I didn’t understand why some things couldn’t be built again, why some games didn’t have do-overs, why some sleeps lasted longer than night and morning and all the mornings after. I didn’t understand why you chose the hungry hole instead of our collapsing home, where your tea was getting cold and your little star was waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting…for the sound of your voice calling the Adhan tomorrow, for your hands to lift me toward the ceiling again, for your promise that we would always, always, always be together… to remember how to be true.

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For Sham,Zinah & Zeinah and all the thousands of palestian orphans who didn't chose their fate.