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<h1 class="title" id="page-title">My city burning peacefully (Our
Gaza is a dream of hope)</h1>
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<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/people/nayrouz-qarmout"
typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel"
datatype="">Nayrouz Qarmout</a> </div>
<b><small><small><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://electronicintifada.net/content/my-city-burning-peacefully-our-gaza-dream-hope/13644">http://electronicintifada.net/content/my-city-burning-peacefully-our-gaza-dream-hope/13644</a></small></small></b>
<div class="field-publication-date">
<span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date"
datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2014-07-26T23:19:00+00:00">26
July 2014</span> </div>
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<div id="file-28147" class="file file-image file-image-jpeg
media-element file-full" style="width:618px;"><br>
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<p>A flame within me, an orange bubble glowing angrily, the din
killing me. Isolation and the rocket explode together, the
bubble expands to include the whole city. The sounds of the
explosion grow louder, more violent, within me; the city burns.
Pictures of the city shred and tear inside me, words quake,
glass shatters, and every splinter of glass carries on it an
image of the event.</p>
<p>A child is poised for life in the curve of his mother’s belly;
his heart explodes out of her heart, which shields him. The
heart is cleft in two, permits a second labor. The missile
bursts the mother’s entrails, but isn’t omnipotent enough to
hear the heartbeats of an innocent, and he hears only the sound
of its explosion which brings him into the world.</p>
<p>Families stand together in prayer and devotion, in communion
with the Lord and believing without doubt in their dreams and
safety. In one room their bodies fly, the stones of the building
fall as the stories collapse and there is rubble and corpses and
grey ash.</p>
<p>Four children race laughing toward the sound of the sea, not
fearing battleships and warplanes, thinking that their childish
innocence will protect them. Their laughter rings out, the
purity of their feet as they run over the sand. They are paying
no attention as the shells from the warship transform them into
fragments.</p>
<p>An innocent child in a hospital bed waits for a father who will
not be back, a mother who will not caress him again. His parents
are dead. He sleeps in God-given tranquillity, not realizing the
tragedy that awaits him when he learns that they didn’t revert
to flesh and blood, that they are now no more than memory and
pain.</p>
<p>A child with an innocent face, bright-eyed, a face like the
moon, soft skin perforated by shrapnel, pain burning the beauty,
crying for help: don’t burn me!</p>
<p>The walls shake, the windows vibrate, the heat intensifies. It
is the heat of war. Drones like insistent night-crickets, and
hearts withdraw from the windows, fearing death. Death moves
closer, not fearing the windows. They look to the sky, the
horizon carries them to the heights, bears their souls beyond
the sea, over the waves, to understand the spirit of soaring
wings. Our souls are united as they fly.</p>
<p>Schoolchildren pass their exams, the certificates with the
names of the graduates become certifications of the tomb. The
universities are emptied of them before they even set foot on
campus.</p>
<p>People sleep outside, exposed, on the wasteground, and in the
empty schools. They scatter as the warning comes of the
destruction of their homes. Days and nights run into each other
as the horror continues, but somehow it is important to be there
when their houses are destroyed, when the earth is burnt, when
the trees and crops are torn up.</p>
<p>The sound of fear, people screaming, reaching out to images on
shards of glass, as if these are lilies which will carry their
souls to paradise. Crying, rejoicing, hesitating, heaving
unexploded missiles to a safe distance, searching for lost
messages of peace.</p>
<p>A circle of flame, a fire that blazes up, a missile from the
explosion. But the city is hiding within the rocket; a missile
of death, with life concealed within it. The rocket doesn’t
know, but the city knows. For a grain of sand from the sea of
Gaza will not ignite, except as hope in the heart beating under
a wave which whets the love of life, and under salt which brings
to it the breath of hope.</p>
<p><em>Nayrouz Qarmout works at the Ministry of Women’s Affairs in
Gaza and is the author of many articles, short stories and
screenplays. Her work appears in English translation in </em><a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/content/doubt-and-desire-abound-book-gaza/13552">The
Book of Gaza</a>.</p>
<p><em>Translation from Arabic by Sarah Irving.</em></p>
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