Together, We Will Fast

"When are we going to eat again, Mom?"

"Soon, baby, soon. But today we're fasting."

"Again? We have to fast again?"

"Yes, honey. We're going to be fasting a lot in the coming days."

"But it's not Ramadan. And the sun is down. Shouldn't we break our fast now?"

"My stomach hurts. I want to eat, Mom, please."

Samiya pulled her daughter Amira close and hid her face in the child's curls, while shifting her infant son and moving him into her other arm. She rubbed their arms as she thought about how to respond.

She repeated what had become her mantra: "I know, baby, mine too. But if you rest and sleep, it won't hurt as much." Samiya hoped that tonight, Amira would be able to fall asleep and escape the twisted feelings of absence in her body.

Last night, no one in the camp got any sleep because the bombs didn't stop until dawn. It would be so beautiful if tonight were different.

As the children began to nod off, she lay them down on the ground and covered them with her shawl. Samiya knew she should try to fall asleep, but she couldn't.

There were parts of her missing that would never be found. That could not be replaced. That could not be made sense of.

She was a mother of five, but she only had two left. She was a wife, but she was alone. A daughter who became an orphan. A sibling dying as an only child.

Sometimes at night, she'd hear the teachings of her youth: "A people have the government they deserve." "There are lessons for humanity in all suffering." "Every child goes to heaven."

Who would watch such a thing? She could barely watch and they were her own children disappearing in front of her eyes. What mother could watch and then go back to her life? And what lessons are there in the suffering that no one is bearing witness to?

As she watched her children shrink, she couldn't figure out what anyone anywhere would gain. What brilliant lessons would humanity receive from not knowing there were two little children in the middle of nowhere, lying on the ground in a tattered tent, fasting another day; children too tired to even cry anymore, too weak to complain, and with a mother too broken to carry them to another camp, or to find food or water.

She ran her hands over their bodies, knowing that they were not going to move anymore. Here, they would fast and sleep until they stopped waking up.

She prayed because the rhythms and the words felt familiar and comfortable. In her voice, she hoped they could feel her love and that it would somehow, someway reduce their pain.

But she knew her prayers didn't matter. She knew there was no god on the other end of them. There was no heaven at the end of these breaths.

Everything had been a lie.

But she knew with a certainty that peace meant not being alive, and love meant not prolonging life.

“Sleep my darlings for magic awaits you.”