It has been hard to think of butterflies since this genocide began. But I do.
The delicate winged creatures remind me of all my wishes. They hover over my head, flapping their shiny wings and looking for a safe landing on my arm. These butterflies make everything seem possible even in my besieged city of Gaza.
My most ambitious dream is collaborating with the famous South Korean band BTS, who themselves sing of butterflies. I hope one day, I am able to compose songs and perform with them, especially with my favorite member, Kim Taehyung, who is known as V, skyrocketing to success and maybe even working for Disney to create a novel Disney princess inspired by the Korean series and Japanese anime. In Gaza, we let our imagination soar. The siege only strengthens our resolve to achieve and ask for what others may think is impossible. Our faith is our steady guide and keeps the butterflies hopping from one person to the next even amid the rubble.
I had simpler wishes once. I hoped to sample the cuisines of the globe beyond Gaza. I craved basic comforts like finding a quiet corner to sleep in, having a working phone to talk to friends, or being online. This war has tried to rob me of all my wishes, the ambitious ones and the ones that we often take for granted.
Before the war, our lives were never complicated. We washed clothes in the washing machine, slept to enchanted dreams, entertained ourselves with TV, played games on the internet, visited relatives, or listened to music. The happiness these elicited was immeasurable.
But the wishes during the assaults on Gaza have no connection to any wish I had in the past. Our wish today is just to survive another day. We wait for the trucks of food to arrive to Dowar Al-Kuwait and Al-Bahar Street, and we hope Israel won’t shoot or bomb us while we wait. We long to see the colors of the vegetables and fruits that line the market stands and the array of sweets that tempt our senses. The food trucks finally reached our shelters recently. They came with cans of food, vegetables, and flour at reasonably acceptable prices that, though still high, we can at least afford after seven months of being overcharged and gouged.
We wish to stroll freely on the streets without fear. I wish to sleep to the humming of birds, not drones. My wish is for the Israeli army to leave our land and for us never to be displaced again.
From sunrise to sunset, all I do is think of these butterflies.
I have seen so many Gazans move from the north to the south without their belongings or their money. The men left with barely any clothes on and some, just in their underwear, holding a white flag as they escaped to what they hoped would be safety under the deafening bombs. But their white flags did not save them: The Israeli army shoots Palestinian civilians without mercy, hunting them as though they were animals. The only smell that saturates the air is from the mountains of trash and the toxic chemicals that bombs leave behind. Swarms of mosquitos and flies gather around. Illness strikes when people are at their weakest.
Our wishes carry the hope we live another day and even those wishes are the afterthoughts of nightmares. Each wish follows a nightmare of being maimed and murdered. I can no longer distinguish a wish from a nightmare. Surviving sometimes turns into more of a nightmare than a wish because the state of our survival is dismal. Will we survive but lose our families, our limbs, our past, our country?
The end of this genocide is going to require a miracle replete with magical feats. Magical powers are the stuff of fairytales and an alternate universe after all. The thought makes me uncomfortable, as though I am betraying the butterflies.
But in the direst times, our wishes keep hovering over our heads and won’t leave our side. I see this most in the questions children ask me. They are fearful of going alone to the bathroom when they hear a door slam or a bomb drop and yet they still carry some hope of calm. I wonder how much longer they can continue to hope when the adults are becoming desperate from all the suffering and ugliness around them. They still ask me, “Auntie! When the war will end? When we will eat candies and sweets? When we will play on hammocks? When we will swim in the sea?” I tell them to keep wishing and praying for an end to the horrors.
My greatest wish today is that the dark times end and that quiet returns without the threatening sounds of the drones. I turn to my faith for hope and strength and it makes every wish possible even as I search for God between the rubble in Gaza. If I stop seeing the butterflies, that is when I will die.
This article is co-published with Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.
