It was a dark night during the war on Gaza. Alaa felt that her heart pricking with pain for her children, who were far away.
She rings on the phone at night. She tells herself that perhaps communications have been cut off due to the barbaric bombing tonight, and that perhaps they are sleeping, but she is certain that fear has filled their hearts, for the trembling of their hearts runs through her body.
She turns around, 'I feel that Yamen is calling me, and that Carmel is crying and needs me.' She waited until morning, she called again, but to no avail!
Days passed, and Alaa's heart was still attached to that call. She tried thousands of times every day. She lives in the middle of the Gaza Strip while her four children were surrounded in Khan Yunis, and the occupation tanks prevented anyone from reaching the house.
For 70 days, the spiral of anxiety and obsessions ate away at Alaa’s mind. In the last call she had with her eldest son, Yamen, he said to her in a trembling voice: “The army took my father prisoner, and we're waiting for you to take us with you.”
For 70 days, Alaa Al-Qatrawi appealed to all human rights
institutions around the world to take action and find out the fate of her children...
She didn't know...
That those 70 days will become a lifetime of anguish...and an eternal life of loss. More than two months later, the Zionist occupation withdrew from Khan Yunis, and Alaa learned that the house had been bombed over the heads of her children.
Yamen with his blue eyes,
Orchid with her velvety hair,
Carmel with her innocent face,
Kenan who was quivering from the sound of tank tracks around their house,
They all died as martyrs.
The occupation killed them.
It deprived Alaa of having someone call her "mom".
Yasmeen Anbar