With partially erased nail polish on my toenails, my blue jeans, my white and blue shirt, and my pink and blue flip flops, I left my home on the evening of October 8, 2023. It was sunset. We thought it was safe in the northeastern corner of the house, since the southern side was already bombed.
We gathered in that “safe” area however, a missile shattered our belief. It hit near the eastern wall. The dust found way to our lungs. It was sunset, the time when almost the muezzin called for the evening, (Maghreb) prayer. That time reminds me always of my grandmother sitting on her couch, counting her granddaughters who have not got married yet. At that moment, she would ask when the time will come to attend our weddings.
When I used to visit her alone, she would tell me at the same time: “Look, you will get whatever you want!” It is by then when I learned how to negotiate with God.
But what then!
The sunset call for prayer drove me out of the house on the evening of October 8 in my blue jeans and my shirt. I was barely breathing. I lost my jeans later when I was displaced. My flip flops too, when my ankle twisted while climbing to a rooftop in Khan Younis to watch the sunset.
By the time I left the city, it was noon prayer. I was displaced again. Now, from Khan Younis to Rafah. I reached there at the time of dawn prayer. It is then that I realized that the call for prayer is not just a mark of time, but rather a transition between one life stage and another.
The last sound I heard on my street was the call for the evening prayer, (Maghreb). The last thing I saw was the dust that swallowed my breath. The last thing I carried with me from it was this blue shirt. I lost the jeans during my displacement in Deir al-Balah after it had many holes. That was almost a year later. I lost my slippers when my ankle twisted while I was climbing a rooftop in Khan Younis to watch the sunset from there!
The sunset will remain a souvenir from my home, and so, does the shirt. All I carry now with me is a kind of umbilical cord tying me to that house.
Here, from the Beach Refugee Camp, my “last” displacement station, my memory managed to settle down. I can glimpse my grandmother’s face again, pleading. I negotiate with the remains of hope over the final enchanting scenes of the city. The sea, the sun lying over the water, where it rests after a long difficult day. That is where I learned how light settles on a bed of water.
There is nothing that connects me now with the idea of homeland except the umbilical cord of memory and the song which says:
“I shall write your name, my country, on the sun that never sets.”
Fedaa Zeyad
08/07/2025
(Translated by Rana Ardaji Bishara)
