Atef Abu Saif: The Children Have Barely Slept
July 31, 2014
Dispatch from Gaza: Day-to-day life continues even in a war zone, but sleep does not.
Image from Flickr via Al Jazeera English
By
Atef Abu Saif
I don’t know how many hours I’ve wasted watching my nineteen month-old girl, Jaffa, sleeping, drifting among the clouds of her dreams; the occasional movement of a limb, the faint smile dancing on her lips. This used to be my favorite moment of the day. But now, looking at children and thinking they could be dead in a minute’s time, they could be transformed into one of those images on the TV, it’s too much to bear. The cruel images from that day when a house in the neighborhood was struck by an F-16 or a drone, or the images that various media outlets have posted online, or those described in vivid detail by a friend who happened to be an eye witness, all these images deny me the pleasure of seeing my kids sleeping peacefully. This used to be one my greatest pleasures.
The children have barely slept in days. Sometimes a couple of hours is enough, especially when what sleep you get is going to be stretched thin with anxiety anyway. Anxiety plays like a lightning storm behind your eyelids whenever you close them, and only when that stops do your hands start to relax. Only then does sleep start to gather, slowly, around you, like a gentle whirlwind, circling you and your loved ones.
I open a window; it’s good to feel fresh air on your face. Important to have a break from staring at the ceiling all the time, or from looking directly into the eyes of your loved ones, seeing the fear in them.
Instead, over the last few nights, I’ve wanted to wake my children up. I can’t bear them being so quiet. When they’re awake, playing, shouting, creating imaginary worlds of their own, they help me deal with my own helplessness. Their noise, the fuss they make, their shouting and running around the flat; all of it makes life a little easier for me. They upstage the sounds of the terrible world outside.
Tonight they will fall asleep quickly, I’m sure of it. The lack of sleep from the night before weighs heavily on them. There’s no electricity. The only light to disturb them is the faint glow of my flashlight. You can hardly see the face of the person across from you, it’s so dark. A few days ago we set down mattresses and bedding in the corridor that runs through the middle of our building, the furthest room from the outside wall. We figure it’s the safest place in the building. I close the door behind them. Tonight, I think, they’ll drop off quickly.
Back in the living room, I open a window; it’s good to feel fresh air on your face. Important to have a break from staring at the ceiling all the time, or from looking directly into the eyes of your loved ones, seeing the fear in them.
It slowly dawns on us, sitting there, that the rest of building is completely empty.
My wife, Hanna and I sit on the blue sofa and stare into the darkness. No light, no details of the world outside the window. Only blackness and the dark outline of the buildings across the street. There is something resembling a world out there, in all that darkness.
It slowly dawns on us, sitting there, that the rest of building is completely empty. Hanna is the first to have noticed it: the people in the flat across the corridor left that morning. Om Noor phoned Hanna that evening saying she had moved to her father’s house in the Al Rimal Quarter. But now she realizes she hasn’t heard a sound from the flat above either. Nor has she heard the heels of the lady who lives down the corridor. We start to retrace the events and sounds and movements of the day, to reinterpret them. It leads to one conclusion: we are the sole occupants of the building, and the building; our home for the last three and a half years; is not safe.
People look to anything that makes them feel sa
