Day 23: by Heba Subeh-Hyder
Every day for the past year and a half I’ve watched the horrors unfold out of Palestine. I think I’ve articulated along with millions around the world my feelings on witnessing the men, women and children dying horrible deaths by the hands of Israel and the US.
I saw something, however, that made me think of the surviving men that hold a special task of uncovering the dead bodies of their wives, children, elderly parents, relatives, best friends, and strangers out of these godforsaken rubbles. This is a task that befell upon them involuntarily. Not only do they have to dig in a frenzy, retrieve the bodies, and give them to their loved ones to bury before the next strike, but they have to deal with the condition of the bodies they find, and these conditions are something out of a nightmare.
The corpses are mostly women and children, and they are often times obliterated and shredded to pieces. There are dismembered children, beheaded babies, and more often than not just bits and pieces of flesh that need to be placed in plastic bags.
These men, these honorable men who have been dishonored through the western European world by racist, deplorable Islamophobic propaganda, must take on the task of putting these shredded pieces back together for their families so they can have some peace and, in turn, give the martyrs a dignified burial.
They do this as their eyes are filled with tears, horror, and disbelief at the nightmare they’re stuck in. They do this while worrying about their own family as surely they see themselves and their loved ones in the bodies they uncover. They do this as they’ve lost all hope, much like the rest of us, that any help from the outside world is coming. They do this as their hope lies only in Allah.
Still, they do this. Still, they dig with their bare hands tirelessly.
There men, these Muslim, Arab men, are not superheroes. They’re regular human beings with thresholds that far supersede yours and mine. Thresholds that allow them to continue to do what they do while their eyes are witnessing horrors, their ears are hearing the anguished screams of everyone, including their own, and their noses are taking in the strong stench of death all around them.
They’ve shown us what it’s like to keep going despite everything standing in their way, they’ve shown us true bravery, and steadfastness, they’ve shown us true resistance and perseverance against the oppressors. They’ve shown us the true Palestinian spirit that’s always been there, masked and muddled by the West.
May Allah show them an end to their suffering and occupation grant them an everlasting peace in this world in the next. May they be of the highest dwellers of Paradise and may we be deserving enough to accompany these out of this world, honorable, righteous human beings.