Playing cat and mouse with flour. Drawing: Sandra Redwan

Dear Rafiq, how long were your eyes staring at her? Were you able to whisper your last word in her ear?

The sun is the only witness that saw everything. She rose each day, putting her touches on the ripe golden wheat swaying in the breeze, there, in the faraway lands. She noticed how it was harvested, ground, and packed into sacks printed with humanitarian logos and emblems. Then she saw it as flour loaded onto massive trucks that stood for months and months in an endless, jammed line at the crossing. She waited with it for the gate to open. And when it finally did, she saw how the flour ended up—next to your head, on the ground, drowning in your blood.

Do you remember our dreams before graduation, Rafiq, when we were studying at the faculty of law to defend international human rights with global impact? Do you remember when we worked hard to earn opportunities to work with international humanitarian organizations? The Strip now is full of them, Rafiq. They are working day and night to serve as long as they are permitted to. The hand that killed you is the same hand that prevents or allows them to do their job. That hand controls everything, Rafiq. If it opens the border crossings, the entire Strip drowns in the diversity of food, and flour becomes less significant. But when they close, flour once again becomes as expensive as a human soul, your soul.

You are luckier than I am. I survived famine to live moments that made me hate belonging to humanity. I survived and tried to move on. I got a job monitoring distributions of humanitarian aid. During that period, I witnessed moments when flour was cheap, silly, and unwanted and others when it was everything. I always told myself that you were supposed to witness these moments with me, to write about them, to document this new and shameful chapter of human history.

You were killed once, but I am being killed every day while I live these moments. Which one of us is really dead, Rafiq?

Weaponizing flour

When I heard you had been killed for the sake of flour, I couldn’t believe it. I still remember you, a short, broad-shouldered young man, with strong arms and defined muscles. You had a steady way of walking that presented a confident, quiet, and special character. For a long time, I wondered how a cowardly bullet could break through that dignified walk and strong muscles.

I want to tell you about some of the things that bullet denied you the chance to know. Let’s start from the day that you were killed. I don’t know what your loved ones ate that day in the midst of the famine that ravaged the areas north of Gaza’s valley. I don’t know what silenced the screams of their hearts and stomachs that day, not only because of losing you, but because of why they lost you.

Were you their only hope of getting some kilos of flour? When you went that night to the place where they threw the flour bags to bait hungry people before killing them, did you know that you were not coming back? Did you say goodbye to your family?

I don’t know what exactly happened to them, Rafiq. But I trust that not long after that day, they must have eaten kilos and kilos of flour. Because only two months after the massacre that took your life, the crossing was opened. All the hungry people, including your family, were able to get hold of flour easily and safely. I assumed that they filled their starving bodies, yet their hearts remained empty from the pain of your absence.

Do you know that the hand that closed the borders, threw bags of flour on Al- Rashid street, and killed you and hundreds of others who went to collect it, is the same hand that opened the borders and allowed humanitarian organizations to distribute flour with zero cost? It is the same hand that writes this era. The hand of injustice and shame.

Mamdoh and the mice

Four months after the massacre, my neighbor Ghalia, who had miscarried due to malnutrition, called me: “Please bring Mamdoh and come to my house right now.”

She had found a group of sneaky mice digging tunnels into the bags of flour she stored at home. Mamdoh was a stray, injured cat that had wandered to my home a few months earlier. I’d cared for him until he recovered and was once again able to catch mice.

I thought about you a lot that day, Rafiq. My neighbor had more than six bags of flour, like most people in the north. Your family likely had as much by then, too. But you were killed for only one bag.

Mamdoh won the battle and defeated the last mouse remaining in Ghalia’s house. I helped her clean up the flour that was spread everywhere. We walked on the flour while we were cleaning up. Ghalia had to get rid of two full bags of flour because they had been contaminated by the mice. After that day, she told me she didn’t see a single mouse in her home. I told her that the ancestors of mice had told their descendants about Mamdoh, so they would never come back.

The story of those mice is less tragic than yours, Rafiq. They expected to be killed by a cat, their historic enemy. It’s an easy story for ancestors to pass down and remember. But you Rafiq, who dares to tell your story? That hundreds and hundreds of bags of flour were there, and you were killed for just one of them, because of the helplessness and injustice of your own kind. Those mice, at least, got to eat from the flour before Mamdoh killed them. But you didn’t.

Do you want good news? Almost one year after you were killed, the war took a short break that allowed people who were displaced to the south to return to the north. They streamed down Al-Rashid Street, where your body fell, as they came back. With heaviness in their steps, they walked over the memory of you and the other victims. A breakthrough accompanied their return—food was available once more. No one was looking for flour any longer, Rafiq.

But that breakthrough didn’t last. The war came back. The borders were closed again. Bakeries closed their doors, and flour became precious once again.

One day, the ancestors of the mice and cats of Gaza will tell their descendants about the days when flour filled the streets like an ocean and the days when famine consumed everything. They will remember because it will be easier for them than for human ancestors to do so. Unlike us, they are not burdened with memory, loss, or sanctity. In the end, even the mice and cats had the privilege of dying for flour in a way far more merciful than the way you were killed.

Until we meet again, Rafiq, rest in peace. May Allah forgive you and have mercy upon you.