February 2006

http://alawda.newjerseysolidarity.org

"Chasing After Birds, Finding the Sky..."

Written Nov 21 2003

Mahmood al-Qaed, shaheed at 13.

Ali's fourteen-year-old eyes are wide brown almonds, a near perfect copy of his father's, which shine like mirrors through the hair that covers his face like a tangled vine. Ali's younger brother Mahmood stares back at them from the poster on the wall, his eyes finely crafted by identical genes, his small face a mirror for his brother's, his thin arms tangling with his brother's arms in bed at night.

Since Mahmood was killed, there isn't anything his parents can do to convince Ali to sleep in his bed where he and his brother used to share dreams. Mostly the family doesn't sleep at all anyway. It's Ramadan, and the fear of dreaming chases their eyelids open until it's 5am and the've eaten the pre-fast meal and the men have come back from the mosque.

We are in Gaza with the family, carrying the night into a kind of raucous vigil. Family members fill up the last space on the thin mattresses and the last plastic chairs and weave conversations through each other until it becomes its own body, a vibrating noise that moves in through our ears and runs from mouths to mouths, leaving faint pains in the temples of the guests until Ali's father orders everyone out at nine o'clock, hands in the air, eyes adamantly wide.

Om Ali's full-moon face looks like it might break at any time as she carries her family on her back, through the breakfast meal and an endless procession of tea, coffee and cigarettes, without ever sitting down before near daybreak. If she does take a break, it is to smoke a cigarette with her sister-in-law in the kitchen, perched like old birds on the kitchen counter in long jilbabs drawn in intricate patterns like lace, blowing smoke up to Allah. They smoke cigarettes since two years now, since Om Ali's brother was killed in Israel two years ago for smuggling non-military trade goods. The pain of their loss is enough to make them forget the societal shame associated with women who smoke cigarettes, as well as the Qor'an, which forbids people to vandalise Allah's creations.

Now especially that Mahmood, Om Ali's second child, has been killed, the pain is visible in her body, as she walks from task to task. It dwells most heavily in her eyes, which have become flat from the task of crying all the time. It lives in her laugh, which breaks from the weariness and from the cigarettes and from the sleeplessness of worry. When she tells us the story of her son's murder her voice runs between the even tone of one accustomed to a great pain, and the more high-pitched, urgent tone when the grief surfaces.

"We live two kilometers from the border with Israel. Mahmood, my son, was killed about 600 meters from that border. Mahmood was 13. He used to always go and catch birds with the other boys in the neighborhood to sell so that we could survive. Since my husband was shot in the back in the First Intifada, he can't work and he has psychological problems in which his mood changes from hour to hour. I spend my life taking care of him.

Ali always used to go with Mahmood to catch birds. They did everything together, even dressed the same - they were like twins, even though Ali is a year older.

The day Mahmood became a martyr, in the morning, Ali said he wasn't going bird catching because soldiers had been coming to the area where they used to go to catch birds. But Mahmood was determined to go and said, 'If you don't go, I'll go anyway with the other kids.' Mahmood is like that. He does whatever is in his head, there is nothing anyone can do to convince him not to do something he has decided to do.

Mahmood went bird catching with two of his friends. They told me what happened to Mahmood. They didn't want to. Nobody wanted to tell me what happened to my son. They didn't want to hurt me. But I made sure to hear what happened.

Mahmood and his friends met up with some farmers that they know on their way to the place where they used to go to catch birds. Then they went to the area and started working. This is the songbird Mahmood caught on that morning just before he was killed.

Several Israeli soldiers on foot cut through the barbed wire on the border with Israel. They were armed with M16s. The rest other two kids were able to run away, but Mahmood got stuck and they caught up with him. They shot him in the heart from a meter away. Why did they shoot him? He was catching birds. Is this a crime?

We think that the first time they shot him was what killed him. But the soldiers did not stop at that. After he fell over, they kicked him hard with their shoes. The doctor said he could see boot marks on his legs. And then they shot him with seventeen more bullets. Some of them went through his jacket, you can see. But his jacket wasn't zipped up, it was open, so not all the bullets went through it. Most of the bullets were fired in his lower body anyhow.

A bit after Mahmood left to catch birds, Ali went out on his bicycle. Not one half an hour later, I got word someone in the Qaed family had been injured. I thought it was Ali. I went to the hospital and asked the doctors. Nobody wanted to tell me what had happened because they were worried about me, because I was a woman and I was by myself and they were afraid to shock me. Everyone was avoiding my questions. Finally I lost it. I started shouting in the hospital lobby for someone to tell me what had happened to my son. Then a man, a police officer, called me over. He said, who are you? I told him my name. He said, come with me. He took me to the room where they store dead bodies. He said, your son Mahmood has become a martyr.

I was confused at first. I had thought something had happened to Ali so it was really strange to find it was Mahmood. Then I felt faint and passed out.

Ali refuses to go to catch birds now and so we have lost every resource of supporting ourselves and must rely completely on the UN's help, which is scant. I have a stomach disorder and my daughter Fatima has a back disorder and we can't go to the doctor or pay for treatments to help them. My brother was killed two years ago and I haven't found any joy since. I don't know why we are here. A person only dies once. Better to die quickly and be with my son again."