The aftermath

What’s next?

What’s going to happen to us? To me? To my family?

It has been more than three months already that I asked myself these questions every morning.

It has been months by then sleeping while praying that I wouldn’t stumble on bad news first thing in the morning and waking up to grab my mobile to check the news. Not any news! Checking the headlines then browsing the photos and videos just to make sure that home was still standing and that the neighborhood was still there waiting for us, the residents to come back and actually stay, not just pay a quick visit. 

“Such hypocrisy!”, I would tell myself. I can’t recall the times I felt like a total imposter. I prayed for the war to stop, I prayed for the dead and the wounded, I prayed for the suffering all around but most of all, I prayed for my house, my building, my family’s property to be preserved from harm. I would feel so little when asking God, but honestly, I couldn’t help it. I was not any better than any of those who were losing loved ones or homes or maybe everything and everyone in one “special operation” but I would still pray for me first. Every time, I chose me and me first, the curse I struggled with all this time between selfishness and compassion. Returning home became a life goal at this point, only to realize time after time the truth that God loves me even though I am a disfigured representation of His son and still a monster in the face of the suffering.

I still stayed in Domus Orientalis apartment so close to Dahye with my daughter, but it felt so distant and so disconnected when rockets hit. My first reaction would be to drive there. A basic animal instinct would take over and all I would want to do was go there, cry and scream out of anger and pain. 

In such moments, I would feel at my lowest level in motherhood and parental responsibility. My daughter is in her twenties now, but as her mother, I had to ensure she was safe but all I could think of was how to send her to her father’s side of the family so I could drive there and just be that random woman sobbing and weeping in full weakness. In her presence, I pretended I was this unshakable parental figure but the urge to run back home would be so strong and I would start to claim my freedom from being a daughter, a mother or any significant person to anyone. I would just want to be there, end of discussion.

My heart was divided in two when my parents attempted to return home twice. I had to be the responsible parent who would make arrangements for her daughter to stay sheltered and to provide her with minimal stability in a critical time. It was pure agony for me to know they were sleeping there when the neighborhood was as silent as a cemetery in the night. Very few dared to return given the volatility of the situation.

Both times, I went to visit them in the evening, only to end up carrying their stuff and being on the run because of sudden escalations. I believe God sent me twice just on time to help them evacuate. I would watch their black Cadillac fade in the dark when parting ways and hold my tears. I was grateful for God’s mercy toward us, yet had an overwhelming feeling of being powerless in an ugly nightmare. 

Since October 2023, countless situations have risen, almost on a daily basis. On a personal level, each was testing my faith over and over again. I would remind myself that any shred of strength and stability I had didn’t come from within, it came from one rock called Jesus. I would remind myself that without Hope, I would either succumb to depression or simply lose my mind.

With bad news everyday and horrible stories all over the social media, the world felt like losing its humanity, nothing was making sense and the amount of suffering around was unbearable. 

Fighting my own thoughts was a daily challenge. Keeping my sanity sounded like the utmost achievement when surrounded with so much madness and brutality. Was life worth it in the first place? I had to answer myself over and over again and answer: “Yes! God gave life and gave it abundantly.”

That day was a totally different experience. For the first time in this war, I was crying helplessly after I learned about the airstrike targeting a relatives’ building close to ours. After checking videos of our street over and over again, I saw it there. What was called later “a failed operation” sounded more of a collective punishment. A man was killed, family members were injured. How important was it to target them? I couldn’t justify it really. Yet, hours later, the incident became an insignificant mishap on international media. Obviously, they didn’t matter enough in the scale of this war. 

It was another one of those hard moments when I acknowledged that I belonged to my Shia community in Dahye as much as I belonged to the Church of God. I was a fusion of both, an alloy that was coarse and hard from the outside but bubbling with emotions on the inside. I don’t know how both sides inside me coexist, they hurt every time they collide but they result in something painful and beautiful at the same time. 

Now and today, as a cease-fire is being tested and a truce is being negotiated, I start packing a few things and planning to return home again.

Now I can write about it. For months I didn’t even know what’s the best message to invoke. For the first time, I would question if my thoughts were relevant facing the tragedy or if I even had the right to talk given the atrocities that others were subject to . So many times I reached for my laptop, typed a few sentences, choked and left. I now have fragments of writings, not a single complete article. I always felt interrupted from the inside. My thoughts were pushing and fighting, each claiming priority over the others. War was waging inside me as well and peace talks were not easy to sustain. I thank God for every word I received during the celebrations and in my theology classes. He knows how much I needed each one of them to sit still today and type. 

I cannot claim that I have a clear picture of the current situation or that I can prophesize about the future. I am just a mere monstrous mess in a human form trying to return to its cave. May God have mercy on me and on this land. I can only imagine what hell it would have been if He hadn’t chosen it.