Forgive me,
I have become a terrible person.
I can’t believe I might wake up to the sound of birds, like those who have grown exhausted from their lives.
I cannot believe that water might flow from the faucet and I don’t have to struggle now to carry the bucket with my twenty-year-old stiffness and pain in my neck and my rough knees.
Forgive me,
I have become a terrible person.
I intruded upon the lives of the martyrs without their permission.
I wrote out of their sorrows. those martyrs who had never found a language to tell us about their sufferings.
I believe that a lover among them had wished to kiss his beloved’s lips before departing.
I believe that another swore if he had spent just one more minute embracing her so that people would have been able to pull him out before he stopped breathing.
I have become a terrible person.
May God forgive me as our kind neighbor, who has been killed with his wife was never happy in my texts. He never felt at peace in paradise without his two little children.
He gave up wine, honey, and pure milk just to return for a single moment to teach his children Surat Al-Fatiha (opening chapter of the Quran).
Forgive me, O God to say it, but the family You sent to paradise all at once will not see it as such without their son who has been left behind alone.
He suffers from the idea that his daughter now would never have an aunt to braid her hair. He shall never feel the warmth of a grandfather.
He shall never receive a grandmother’s kiss after a cold bath.
He shall never know what Eid (feast) truly means.
Forgive me, O God, for my grief was not vast enough to embrace all the bodies that once passed by me on a cart, stacked one atop the other.
I did not kiss each of them on the forehead.
I haven’t learned their names.
I haven’t dug enough to explore their dreams.
I reached home.
I learned from the news that they had tried to catch a glimpse of their houses from far away, but the soldiers on the tank had not allowed them.
Forgive me, O God, for being home.
Forgive me, O people, for your prayers have been returned to you. From now on, do not pray for us to have long lives or to spend more time in bringing up our memories.
It would be better to forget the names of those we once loved, when mentioned by our beloved ones.
It would be a relief to stop singing those songs that once brought us happiness but at the same time sharpen the blade against our veins.
Forgive me God for I have grown up quickly.
I have become the terrible person that I never wanted to be.
I stay up late alone with my anxiety and I wake up early. I look forward to my day, but in vain. I have never been able to accept the art of white lies.
I no longer listen to songs or watch movies.
I no longer leave the house.
I am drowning in my silence.
I have left behind my friends, my companions, and my madness.
All that I want is to be the child I once was.
The child that ceased to exist when his mom no longer scrubbed his skin with her rough loofah.
Haidar Ghazali
January 19, 2025
