"Dreams start in December." That's what I had told my five flowers when we gathered one day in the reading hall at the Qattan Center for Palestinian Children, as we were accustomed to every Thursday!
In December, the year's agendas with all their plans, dreams, and accomplishments close, and a brand new calandar for a brand new year starts with an even greater passion.
Juman, Yaman, Bisan, Marya, and Yafa,
They would surround me and I would feel as though I own the entire universe.
Juman,
She stands on the school stage and recites the poem, “In Al-Quds, who is in Al-Quds but you?”
She promised me that the end of the year would come and I had memorized the rest of her passages. I had told her, “December will be our time, and next year you will be a good poet and novelist."
Yaman,
At a young age, she saw a group of around 1,500 Qu'ran memorizers, reciting in circles in the mosques of Gaza. She was captivated by the light in their faces, like lamps of light in the greatest Qur’anic phenomenon in history. We celebrated when she memorized ten parts of the Qur’an, and she promised us that she would finish it in December.
Marya,
I believed in her. I wanted her to be strong, peacefully strong. I had hoped she would become a professional karate player.
Two months before the war on Gaza, her instructor gave her an orange belt.
She had promised me that on the last day of December, I will take a picture of her with a black belt.
Bisan,
The quiet beauty, her father had written a card for her ninth birthday.
"Happy birthday, my darling Bisan."
Yafa,
The apple of our eyes, she would eagerly await her father to come home from work. She would gather her sisters, play with her father, and accompany him to buy sweets. Her heart
was the source of delight in the house.
I didn't complete the dreams that my girls set out to accomplish. We had planned to wrap up those dreams in December.
Only for October to come quickly and without permission, stealing our plans and dreams from us.
December came.
We were about to celebrate Marya getting her black belt at the Karate Center.
We were also about to bring Yaman a cake for memorizing the second part of the Qu'ran, as we were accustomed to doing.
I lied this time.
I am ashamed of myself.
I have been very honest with my daughters.
Oh, how their dreams crumbled and collapsed in December.
Missiles, bombing, a fierce war, a genocide.
I forgot about the girls' dreams,
and went on to write poetry and texts for the sake of Gaza.
Gaza, which I love.
I wrote about the martyrs and their dreams,
about the sad December,
about how I lied and December started killing us.
Don't start making wishes.
I am a Palestinian writer and poet,
Mona Shamali.
I am now under the rubble of my house in Gaza that we refused to leave.
My daughters and I.
Juman is a martyr.
Yaman is a martyr.
Marya is a martyr.
Yafa is a martyr.
Bisan is a martyr.
Their father, Fahim, is a martyr,
as are 40 people from his family.
He urges you to
tear up the family book
and "remove my name from the civil registry."
for we all have gone to heaven!!!!
Yasmeen Anbar