Artwork created specifically for this poem depicting Ismail Abu Aitah’s family members, by Basem Samara

There was a table once.
Not a special table.
Just wood.
Just a surface.
But around it —
everything that mattered.
My father, Ibrahim.
My mother, Jamila.
My brothers, Mohammed, Ahmad, Mahmoud, and their families.
My sisters, Iman, Manal, and Ala’a.
My nephews, Adham among them.
Filling the space around it
without thinking about it.

Then came the night of July 24, 2014.
One night.
One missile.
Five people.
My father.
My mother.
Mohammed.
Ahmad.
Adham.
Five chairs,
empty.
Not one by one.
All at once.
In a single moment
that I did not understand
until morning came
and they didn’t.

I learned something that year
that no one should have to learn:
A table doesn’t need people
to remain standing.
It stays.
The chairs stay.
The wood stays.
Only the warmth disappears.
And once warmth leaves a place,
the place is never the same.
Even if you are still sitting
in the same chair
you always sat in.
Even if the food is still there.
Even if the room looks the same.
Something is gone
that no amount of presence
can replace.

The years passed.
Not easily.
But enough to try again.
Enough to learn
how to sit at a table
with five empty chairs
and still eat.
Still talk.
Still exist.

Then October 7, 2023 came.
And the war returned.
And Mahmoud,
my last brother,
the one who stayed,
the one who sat beside me
through everything
was taken.
Not in 2014.
Not in that single terrible night.
But on May 16, 2025.
After ten years of surviving together.
After Bir Al-Na’aja
and the cards we played on that table
to forget the fear.
After him saying:
“One day we’ll look back
and remember the good days.”
Another missile.
And now he was
another empty chair.
The sixth chair.

Six chairs now.
I sit at the table.
The wood is the same.
The surface is the same.
But the weight of the silence
is louder now.
Heavier.
More complete.
As if the table itself
has learned
what I have learned:
That loss
doesn’t arrive once
and leave.
It arrives.
It stays.
It pulls up a chair.
And even when you learn to live with it,
it takes more space.

Six chairs.
Six names I carry
to every table I sit at.

Ibrahim.
Jamila.
Mohammed.
Ahmad.
Adham.
Mahmoud.