Tomorrow the war ends... but!

Amin Al-Hajj

Tomorrow, the roar of the planes that have been invading the sky and stealing sleep from the eyes of children and mothers will stop. Twenty-one months of war have swept through Gaza's homes and dreams, until the men leave without knowing if they have homes to return to by evening. When it is announced that the war is over, people will cheer with joy, but they will leave with steps heavy with doubt and pain, looking around them, as if searching for the last proof that they are still alive. Umm Muhammad will walk through the rubble, stumbling over torn clothes and debris that rises above everything, repeating with eyes filled with tears: Twenty months, and I don't know if my son is alive or "dead." Every time I ask, they say, "Wait, we haven't counted the names yet."
In the narrow alleys, another woman sits in the shade of a half-standing wall, hugging what remains of her, her little daughter, and whispering: We thought we would be displaced for days... Many months have passed, and we no longer have a home or a father. She wipes her daughter's tears and tries to smile, but she knows that the pain does not go away with a smile, nor does it disappear with the end of the war.
Tomorrow the war will end, tears will fall instead of bullets, mothers will wander between hospitals looking for a husband or a son, men will go out looking for a father or a brother, and they will strike with their hands in the rubble, before the bulldozers swallow everything. There, all the chapters of the crime will be revealed: unknown bodies, remains without names, and names without a trace in the ground. In the midst of this destruction live stories that no one tells. A child in a corner of a school where he lived for an age, hugging his toy to his chest and muttering: I miss my bed... My mother says we will return soon, but I do not believe anyone. I want to sleep one night without fear.
In hospitals that have become testaments to the world's helplessness and complicity, a doctor sits among beds crowded with wounded and groaning, saying in his tired voice: Every morning I open my eyes and I am afraid. Death has become normal, but seeing children dying without us being able to help them broke our hearts forever. Another says: We used to go out under the bombing to search for the wounded, and every time I saw children trembling and finding no one to hold their hands. The worst moment is when a child asks me if I have seen his mother, and I have no answer.
This war has not left a heart unburned. It has stopped the wheel of life. There are no factories, no shops, not even markets. Bread has become a distant wish, and water a luxury that only a few can obtain. In every corner you will meet pale faces searching for a trace of life, a memory that saves the soul, and a mother sitting on a rusty chair, whispering to herself the names of children who have departed one after the other, or a child asking for a heart to embrace him when darkness falls.
And tomorrow, too, the fighters will return after the longest war Palestine has known. Pale faces, tired eyes, shoulders heavy with rifles and the memory of those who have passed away. They will not only walk out waving the banner of victory, but with steps topped with a silent recognition that every war steals something from the souls of those who fought it. They will return to mothers who waited with hearts suspended between fear and pride, to sons who grew up knowing nothing but the image of an absent hero adorning their mobile screens, to homes of which nothing remains but ashes, and conversations that bear no resemblance to their childhood or the smell of their homes. But in their eyes, there is a spark of certainty that Gaza is greater than any siege and stronger than any death.
Tomorrow the war will end, but it will leave hearts suspended between certainty and despair. Tomorrow may not be a day of victory or defeat, but rather a day of bitter recognition that this land has paid a price beyond all ability to bear.
On the morning of the first day of silence, they will cry a lot, and their hands will be clasped in a message to the world that we are here, not numbers, but souls that bled dry, but despite everything we love life as much as we can.
Tomorrow the war will end... but Gaza's pain will never end. Its heart bears witness to the pain, and its face tells the story of a people who have been broken a thousand times, but never were.