I don’t remember what day it was. Might’ve been Wednesday. Or maybe Sunday. Doesn’t matter — the days bleed together now, like dirty water soaking through torn lace.
But I remember the moment.
My daughter, Hiba, sat cross-legged on the floor, tongue poking out in concentration, sketching with a half-broken crayon on the inside of a cereal box. We hadn’t had cereal in months — maybe longer. I’d kept that box like some idiot souvenir. She was drawing… I think it was a flower. Or a rocket. The difference blurs, these days.
I had one sachet of powdered milk left. Just one. Not enough for both of us. Barely enough for her. The water I boiled was cloudy — it always was — but I stirred the powder into it anyway, pretending I didn’t smell the bitterness. That tinny, almost rusty tang. I told her it was “magic milk,” like I always did.
“Drink it fast before it disappears,” I said with a smile that felt stitched onto my face. Her fingers wrapped around the cup like it was the Holy Grail. I turned away so she wouldn’t see me watching, but I still listened to the sound — her small lips against the rim. That sound broke me.
Because I was hungry too. God, I was so hungry.
We live — if you can call this living — in what used to be a tailor’s shop. The mirrors are cracked. Threads and buttons still scatter the floor. Every morning, I sweep them into a pile like I’m tidying a museum of broken dreams. I sleep on a mattress that smells like damp shoes and burned fabric. Hiba has a blanket I found in the rubble of an old bakery. It has cartoon ducks on it, now stained grey from soot and grief.
Our window is boarded up with wood that used to be someone’s front door. A red number is spray-painted on it — 342-B — which means someone once thought this place mattered enough to mark.
When the shelling starts — and it always starts — we play a game.
I tell her, “Shhh… the ground is sleeping. Don’t wake it.”
She nods like it makes sense, like explosions are just dreams we can tiptoe around. She clutches her blanket, and I pretend the way she shakes is from the cold.
I tell her stories about trees, about mangoes falling onto picnic blankets. I describe soft grass and birthday cakes — things she barely remembers. Sometimes I make her laugh. Other times, I just hold her while she stares at a wall like it might answer something I can’t.
There used to be a woman down the street, Samia — old, half-blind, sharp-tongued. She sold lentils from a jar, one scoop at a time. I traded her my wedding earrings for a bag once. The metal was cheap. She knew it. But she gave me the lentils anyway. Said, “Kids don’t eat jewelry.” Then she laughed, and I cried, and she patted my arm like she was dusting it off.
She’s gone now. Hit during market hour. Her stall burned. I stepped over her glass jars weeks later, the lentils spilled like brown rain.
My husband — Hiba’s father — disappeared last spring. One minute, he was fixing the hinges on our water drum; the next, just… gone. He left his shoes by the mat. I still haven’t moved them. I don’t know if I’m waiting or in denial or if I just like the way they anchor me to a version of reality that doesn’t exist anymore.
She asks about him. Less often now. That makes it worse, somehow.
One night — weeks ago, or maybe longer — I found a pigeon. Dead. Whole. No maggots. Just still warm.
I stood there, staring at it like it had personally challenged my morals. Would I cook it? Could I?
I did. Boiled it with garlic paste and salt. That night, Hiba said it was the best chicken she ever had. I laughed so hard I had to sit down. Then I cried. Quietly.
And then — two days ago — something strange happened.
A truck came. Not the kind that brings bombs. A white truck with a blue stripe and loudspeakers blaring something garbled. Men in masks tossed bags onto the road. Flour. Water. Sanitary pads. Powdered formula. They didn’t wait.
People ran like hyenas. Clawing, screaming. I ran too. I don’t know how I got the bag. I think I elbowed someone. Or bit someone. I don’t care. I got the bag.
Inside: rice, oil, two tins of beans, and — oh God — a bar of soap.
A bar of soap.
I let Hiba smell it first. She looked confused.
“What is it?”
I didn’t know how to answer.
“It smells like… something pretty,” she whispered.
We haven’t used it yet. It’s wrapped in cloth, under my pillow. I like to believe that the moment I open it, something good will return. Like hope, or electricity, or maybe just the feeling of being clean.
Last night, she asked me, “Mama, are we the good guys or the bad guys?”
I couldn’t answer. I just pulled her close.
Because in war, there are no good guys. Just people trying not to disappear.
And I don’t care if I have to boil shoe leather or barter my own breath. I will keep her safe.
Even if everything else burns.
