Beside the Sickle Moon

As a child of four, I found myself burdened by the adult problems of life and death, right and wrong. I, as a dreamer, living on the bare subsistence provided by a UN blue ration card, in a crowded room, on a side street in Soor, stand as a witness to Zionist inhumanity. I charge the world for its acquiescence in my destruction.

- Leila Khaled before becoming the first known woman to hijack an airplane

1969

I hear the rhythmic pin-drop of muffled revenge from tunnels being dug twenty meters beneath my feet. The scrapped remains of Hamas stain their hands umber with dirt, gripping jackhammers tight under artificial light. They breathe through kuffiyih swathed across their perspired faces. The acrid nostalgia of what should have been keeps their muscles from failing. But the earlier expressions walking into my convenience store told me all that I really needed to know about their true disposition: they’re sick of this shit. I am too, only it isn’t losing the struggle for Palestine that has me tapping my Converse shoes against the concrete floor. Their superior, Mo’taz, is half an hour into slow-counting money he owes while Aylul waits agitated in the truck outside.
“Have I ever told you The Tale of the Ox and Donkey, Laeth?” His baleful eyes look up at me. They’re strained red, glowing in dark sockets concave from lack of sleep and cheap cocaine. Mo’taz kicks his boots up on the register, knocking over a Kent Cigarettes hologram ad flickering neon blue. I wait for the stout man to regain his composure, wondering how many of his friends he’s seen die. 
“Once or twice – hey, listen…” I’m in no mood for the same old story. Given the chance, we’ll be here for hours. I’ve got little patience for more disjointed stories while he scratches lice out of his mustache.  It’ll end with us bleeding out on the floor, and I just mopped.  “I’ve gotta head out. As always, ma’lim, it’s good doing business.” It takes a second yank to get the wad of cash out of his thick ringed fingers. Without a glance, I make my way to the front door between porcelain tile aisles of gumdrops and ketchup flavored chips; cardboard toilet paper and hanging bananas; women’s perfume imported thirty years ago mingling with pita bread and canvas sacks of sunflower seeds. 
“I must say, with the hero of Jericho dead – Allah Yarhamu – it’s a shame to see his daughter living out her days with such little purpose.” Mo’taz pauses to clear the tar from his throat.  “She ignores an offer for leadership then counters with discounted space for digging operations? It’s an insult! A scandal! Khalid’s sacrifice sinks further in vain each day she pretends this lazy charity is enough for the Cause. Willfully deaf to the Hadith, living with a man she isn’t married to!” He tugs at his paisley button up, sweat flying off tungsten prayer beads entangled in his chest hair. 
Whatever he’s on seems to be fading fast. “Enough.” I turn aiming the onyx muzzle of my Taurus .22 at his head. I barely knew my uncle when he was alive, but I’ll be damned if I let this zealot speak ill of his legacy. I like to think that in the time it takes for the blood to drain from his face, Mo’taz acknowledges that the mistake he made is thinking power exempted him from entropy. In that space, there’s no time to consider that I’ve never once pulled the trigger.
“Aylul’s charity wasn’t cheap rent: that was me. It’s been six months without a thank you. You’re welcome. It’s my pleasure – really – where would we be if we forgot the hospitality of our ancestors? But no, MoMo, their gift was letting you live even though you’re spreading that trite shit all over Ramallah.” I take a few steps forward to highlight the five inches I have on Mo’taz and aim at his heart. “From now on, you’ll take whatever Aylul gives you as benevolence. Nod if you understand.” 
Mo’taz complies, oil dripping down his neck. I take a beat to close my eyes and bury the adrenaline. When he averts his gaze from the gun to me, I wink and turn the weapon over to reveal no mag and an empty chamber.
“Ya hayawan!” he shrieks, scrambling for something to throw. “You can’t treat a captain of Hamas this way!” A can of Pringles launches, my wavy brown mane softening a blow to the head. “If this was ten years ago-!”
“You’d be three years away from becoming what you once were instead of seven into thinking you still are.”  I walk behind the counter and reach over his head for a pack of cigarettes, tear the aluminum, and pop one between my lips. Not a tremor. Mo’taz is a lot of things ugly, but a coward isn’t one of them. Meandering my way back to the front aisles, I recall something as I push through the glass door. “Tell your guys not to shit in the bathroom this time, it still doesn’t flush.”
Living in a village turned two-star town all my life hasn’t stopped the weekend summer skyline from making me feel invincible. There’s a whiff of cardamom in the dusty breeze as I crunch along the gravel lot to a beat off tune with the mating calls of sunbirds hidden in wilted palm trees. Delivery drones hum and buzz along their routes overhead against a backdrop of missile-thin clouds floating inside a fuchsia sky. I straighten out my leather jacket, excited for a night of possibilities. 
Just five kilometers from Ramallah’s southern checkpoint, Ayn Yassin is one of the last bastions of agriculture near the city. If it wasn’t for the lazy river bleeding nutrients right along the spine, everyone’s persimmon orchards wouldn’t stand a chance in the otherwise hard land. With the ozone nothing more than a childhood memory, it was only a matter of time before it dried up like the Dead Sea. Maybe another decade or two, it doesn’t matter. Too many people started throwing trash in the water ever since some fool with a loud mouth mentioned how it might reach the Israelis upstream. 
I look back at my father’s shop as Mo’taz turns off the OPEN sign. Aylul’s been pushing for a paint job, but I like the contrast between our limestone store and vogue glass condo nestled on top. There’s a trend nowadays to decorate homes with SnapSmart tech that tailor fit iron bar girih against stone, but I see them as self-made prisons. It would be an insult to my parents after all their hard work renovating the space before they left to the States. Been a couple years, but it’s still hard to imagine they trusted me with the shop after declining their offer to live in Dearborn. Which reminds me, I should call. The truck’s horn slaps me out of the memory.
“If you’re done staring at the clouds, we’ve got places to be more colorful than this.” Aylul leans over the passenger seat, knockoff Armani suit fit for a funeral snagging on the drivers’ side window. They burst out laughing at my seizure, cranking the volume on the stereo to hide behind synchronized guitar riffs.
The noise upsets a street dog passing through, its chestnut coat spiking before it barks in my direction. I ignore the offense, jogging instead to greet my femme fatale. Grey sleet stardust painted on metal curvature meant to resist nature’s might stands on twenty-inch black aluminum legs, each autonomous from the other. Shadow-tinted LEDs gaze unblinking at twilight, eager to witness land ravished. Opening the door, I lean on the side step and swing into the red cushion bliss of my Dodge Warlock. 
“Where to?” I dial the music down and ask again. 
Aylul sinks into their chair, tugging at a loose afro curl before popping the overhead mirror to apply caramel blush. “Cid wants to grab lumpia from that new restaurant before your big night.”
Takes forty minutes longer than it should to get out of Ayn Yassin thanks to the new checkpoint; Israeli militants in scarab scale armor and automatic weapons lazily litter around a wooden cross lever, stopping cars to chat amongst each other. Whether you cuss or plea, it makes no difference unless someone leans too far out their window. Such an offense promptly gets you dragged out of your vehicle and into detainment. The occupiers ask whoever is with them to move the car or push it in a ditch. Aylul doesn’t say a word until we get through, and even then it’s only to ask why I sprayed so much cologne.
It’s not long before we reach the dune edge of Ayn Yassin. Here on Muzayin Street, mechanic shops line both sides of the median for the last kilometer stretch to Ramallah.  Rusted tin and stone garages all advertise the same variation of chrome rims next to handwritten cardboard signs promising a better deal than the other guy. One of the greater mysteries of the universe is how they manage to stay alive clustered together like this. Muscle memory takes me left while I try to figure it out, easing the breaks and shifting to park in front of a scrapyard. 
Cid Silang pushes through the front door of the forward facing shed, white tooth grin reaching past his aviators. He does a little jig, brown locks dancing in the wind, dusting off his Tommy Bahama shirt on his way to the truck with a shimmy. Aylul laughs, but I sense something forced in it. 
“Diwa’s hanging back; she’s got a client in an hour.” Cid’s accent flows into Arabic like baritone silk when he enters. “Ya’ll going to the protest later?” 
“Haven’t heard much about it,” I reply, then ask, “Where?” 
“Southern checkpoint at sunset,” Aylul says and shrugs at my raised eyebrow. “Mo’taz told me about it. Loads of media are coming; it’s a good marketing opportunity for Hamas and Fatah to peddle a unified front. All it took were outposts popping up and now they want to pretend Ayn Yassin matters-”
While Aylul and Cid talk politics, I focus on pin drop pianos scaling through bass bubbles and synth waves, tip-tapping my finger along to off-rhythm thoughts of torn banners and tear gas burning the sky. I’m scared, but something inside me breathes a second wind: purpose. Now I’m scared shitless. Goosebumps raise the hairs on my arms. I try to suffocate grandiose notions of stopping rising tides by raising the volume. 
Driving into Ramallah feels like leaving the past and entering the present of a different reality. Visiting the city so often never stops me from staring at the hundred-foot monument that greets those coming from the southern road. An onyx pillar etched with the silhouette of faceless crouching bodies erects skyward, a robed man chiseled from stone stands atop them presenting the sun for all to witness. Cid notices me ogling the statue and chuckles before returning to a harmonized hum with the radio. 
I direct us to cut through the area of the new age metropolis in order to get to Little Manila quicker. You can hear Western currency breathing through the mortar and pipes in this borough: Roman pillars, even sidewalks, glass skyscrapers, and a Wendy’s finer than most sit-down restaurants in Ayn Yassin. Here, you can go to national museums and nightclubs on the same block, H&M or Zara, the USAID mansion and karaoke, Turkish baths and Thai food. Drones traffic fifty feet above us to lights and intersections different from our own. Self-driving vehicles honk their horns at my truck’s manual errors. Hologram models catwalk between buildings, showcasing this season’s latest lines of jewelry and fashion while three dimensional LEDs twirl spits of lamb dripping off awnings to form the perfect shawarma.  The Abdel Nasser Mosque stands purposefully at the center, Islamic spire grasping crescent tips toward heaven. The adhan blares through the loudspeakers, barely a muffle over the hustle and grind. It is gentrification at its finest, and like the deprived asshole I am, I love being here. 
You know you’re in Little Manila once you feel the violent rumble of cobblestone streets. The houses here are built on top of one another without regulation, mismatched puzzle pieces of anything that could be nailed or soldered together. As we hobble along, my destination comes into view: a steep hill outlined with contrast buildings of bright blue, orange, and yellow. The three of us stop at a hole in the wall Cid found online claiming to have the best beef lumpia in the city. Half a dozen picnic tables in the back facing an empty lot make up the dining area, all but two filled with American expats sharing their roughin’ it stories. From the sound of it, they’re volunteer scholars varying from recent grads to retired professors, ruminating on a better life when they could flush mountains of paper down the toilet. All have VitaStim gills protruding from their wrists. 
Years ago, when global climate reached a point of no return we all saw coming, reserves in countries along the equator hit an all-time low. To combat this, the United Nations pushed big tech corporations for a humanitarian solution. They discovered a method to capture moisture in the air to maintain a constant hydration powered by the user’s heart. While ingenious in theory, the faulty prototypes were tested on the poor while refined models were bedazzled for public consumption.  The water conductors need to be replaced every six to twelve months depending on the make and brand, otherwise the generators leak toxins into the bloodstream. For most here, it’s more affordable to scrape thirty shekel for a day’s worth of bottled water than five thousand upfront for a year’s endless supply. 
The expats’ voices are louder than the overhead sound system straining a Beatles cover band. A man with a widow’s peak thinner than my patience is haggling down a waitress to be his maid. She just arrived from the Philippines, she explains; and doesn’t know better than to set a fair price, I think while she goes over her list of services. I peek up from my fried roll at Aylul when one of the younger girls with a diamond Stim expresses her disbelief at how backwards a country must be for not legalizing gay marriage in 2065. 
“What would a Band Aid on an artery wound know of complicated delights when they can’t even honor basic human rights?” Aylul interrupts. The voices die down. An accented “Strawberry Fields Forever” crackles overhead; a meek apology follows from the table like a wisp. Aylul rolls their eyes and crumples an aluminum wrapper. “We’re heading out.” 
I glance at Cid to gauge a reaction, but he’s too busy staring down the expats behind me, so I stuff the last roll in my mouth and get up to leave. 
With as much as two “I don’t care’s” to go off, I don’t know where else to go but the Olive Tree. Blasting the air conditioner to cool some heads, I take us the long way up narrow streets that wind around the jabal. There’s a bazaar strip between limestone high rises where women in lilac hijabs haggle prices beside dismembered mannequins. Laugher spills out of barber shops the size of my kitchen. Ka’ik stands reused from library shelves filled with sesame bread, rawboned fish on melting ice by the side of the road, and, my personal favorite: five-table, no frills, card-dealing hookah lounges. I imagine it’s the Palestine that comes to mind whenever someone takes up arms against Israel, but it never settled well with me to have our poorest form be our highest aspiration. There’s an irony that places like these aren’t wholly defined by gentrification and survival, an essence that can’t be found in the upscale parts of the city where Palestinian Authority execs languish. 
Back in the chrome metropolis, I parallel park outside a monolith of tinted glass windows outlined in gold. Back in 2048, while Israel celebrated a hundred years, the wealthiest moguls in Palestine built The Royale as a message of fortitude to their people. At the time, unemployment was at a dismal 51%, and land was being swallowed faster than Sheikh Omar knew how to guzzle profit. Most of us thought the end had finally come. So the linchpins reckoned if people saw a hotel that rivaled Burj Khalifa, confidence in foreign investment, and therefore improved quality of life, would soar. Never once crossed their minds that lies or not, half a billion looked better in our stomachs. Now that the future’s here, The Royale’s lasting impression is one of backroom pipeline deals between the King of Jordan and the Knesset further dividing Palestine like their forefathers. 
The three of us walk through sliding glass doors and frayed pixel walls past an unmanned front desk, footsteps echoing down marble corridors branching off into empty rooms. We reach the far wall to a digital night sky where a sapling blooms into olive tree branches with keys dangling amid the leaves. A dozen doves encircle above like a halo made of starlight, birds pulsing white in growing expanse until the entire wall before us is a blank slate. From the middle, a crack, a widening, and the elevator warmly greets us with an automated hello as we step inside. With the rest of the floors the same as the first, going halfway to the 36th floor is the only option the program grants us. I voice confirmation, and in seconds the doors reopen.
Metallic purple curtains fold back to unveil our regular watering hole. When the Olive Tree first opened, only the finest in Ramallah could catch reservations if they planned days in advance. Palm trees rose as high as the mosaic dome ceiling, the floor beneath an interactive display of guests’ footprints on white sand beaches. Back then, one could grab a fifty shekel cocktail of fireworks in a martini glass while performance troupes and local pop stars dazzled the crowds on the magnet stage floating in the center. Now black holes dot the sands, palms wilted brown by gravity and negligence. Cracks web across the sapphire tile overhead, the stage replaced by a touchscreen jukebox off in the corner by the bar. Low-rank Fatah militant grunts clutter around half a dozen tables, chain smoking cigarettes between passing puffs of double apple hookah clouds. They hoot and groan like rabid dogs at each play of hand much to the annoyance of a black clad waitress just trying to hear an order. 
“We get the table, you grab the drinks,” Aylul says, already heading for the balcony.
I’m about to mention this being the fifth time I’ve paid when I notice their eyes darting around, presumably searching for any sign of Leila. We part ways crossing the opposite side of the room, broken digitized footsteps treading in sand with an old Fairuz love ballad melancholic on the airwaves. I nod to the tuxedo bartender new on the scene–Malik, I think–but the amateur bodybuilder stays fixated on a video reflected in his contact lenses, hands rubbing his shaved head.
“Hey, is Leila working?” I ask, leaning over the counter. 
“Tonight,” he replies vaguely. “Goddamn Fatah,” he mutters more to himself, “cannibals the second TFO shows up. If they’d put half that energy into the Cause instead of running when the Yahud show up...” Malik’s voice trails off when flames bloom in his iris. He blinks twice to cut the feed.
I avert my gaze to luminescent shelves of liquor so I can push the taboo topic. “I take it you wave the white flag?” 
Affiliating yourself with The Forgotten Ones, a social movement resurging among younger Palestinians, is a quick way to get your ass kicked anywhere outside a college campus. Coining the derogatory term that their critics slung at them, the grassroots NGO advocates for a peaceful transition to Israel’s one-state conquest where most Palestinians hear whimpers of surrender. 
“Nah,” he glances around like he’s nervous to lose his job. “I’m just sayin’: We’re livin’ in stone bubbles, but still askin’ for 1967 borders? C’mon, bro.”
“Hmm,” is all that’s required for his shoulders to slack, “What were you watching? Last week’s shit show in Al Birwa?”
“Ayn Yassin,” the bass in his voice threatens to crack the glass he’s shining, “bastards never stood a chance.”
My heart drops through the earth. “The protest isn’t until sunset.” 
Malik shrugs me away to hear an order. “Dunno what to tell ya,” he says eventually. “Looks like the party started early. Now what can I get ya to drink?”
I break away from the bar and cross the cracked beach fast. Pushing through the glass doors to the balcony, a sense of vertigo lifts my nausea horizontally, adjusting to the glass floor half a kilometer off the street. Cid and Aylul lean over the railing due south where soft plumes of smoke rise just before the ridge. They turn as I approach, fists at their sides saying more than words can. Silence clouds my hometown at this distance except the whoosh of the wild wind blowing. The gun stashed in my glove compartment comes to mind as I watch smoke rise. 
“Let’s go,” is all I say to get us moving.  
Testing the redline, I push the truck’s engine to shave half the time getting home, its four- wheel drive ravenously chewing through dirt roads and tight turns. We’re not far from the checkpoint when we hit a fifty-car backup. Aylul instructs me to pull off to the shoulder to park. As the others climb out, I open the glove compartment and grab the pistol, wedging it behind my waistline. Once I open the door, a cacophony of wild arguments and shapeless screaming overwhelms the senses. The familiar pop, pop, pop of teargas canisters reverberate as streams of choking white clouds arc over and into the crowd. Those with something to prove grab the piping hot metal with the shirts off their back, tossing them away from the others. Few attach the canisters bursting with steam to mechanized slingshots; lasers detect the distance between them and the IDF fifty meters back before sending to the return address. Protesters in the rear wave Palestinian flags while some Irish, South African, Ukrainian, and even Israeli rise high above their heads, shoulder to shoulder. Men, women, but mostly children raise their fists as people in Hamas green and Fatah yellow roll tires to the frontlines chanting “Bil Roh, bil Dem, Nifdeeq ya Falastine!” With soul, with blood, we will defend you, Palestine! It takes several repetitions, but soon they are one voice. 
We three stand arms-crossed on the outskirts of the crowd. We’ve been here countless times before, now watching for catalysts: an occupying prom king raising his gun too high, hive mind reactive sways, a Palestinian stepping too far over the tire line. If this were fifteen years ago, I’d be wrapped in a kuffiyih taking a sledge hammer to bus stops for ammunition too. But watching rubble crumble under a sonic shield’s pressure does the same to the soul over a lifetime; really puts things into perspective. It doesn’t matter how deeply one believes. All three hundred here have at some point felt the stolen strength of Goliath. For some, it burns a new dimension to their fury. Others alchemize despair into suicidal bravery. For most of the five thousand behind the checkpoints in Ayn Yassin, it’s praying for good health and good luck.
“Move!” English assaults us from behind. A forgettable man hidden by a trucker hat leans out of a slow moving news van late to the development. He pushes Cid to the side as he gets out of the vehicle to set up a trifold camera bigger than my torso. The rooftop satellites hum as journalists jump out in scarab armor same as the IDF’s. Only difference is a sticker that reads PRESS on their chests. A hooded person unpacks a dozen dragonfly drones from Styrofoam briefcases to record from up high while a few flutter and sift through the crowd with prerecorded questions to interview protesters. 
A commotion stirs at the nucleus of the masses, limbs tangling into themselves before a bubble ripples from the core. In a tightly knit circle, university students clad in white push their way into expanding far enough for some white clad boy to raise a ladder. Halfway to the top, one of his ilk hands him a blank banner twice their size to swirl above his head. The kid barely manages a hello to the soldiers behind beige-plated Humvees. For a moment, the tear gas stops and the smell of burning rubber overwhelms the pepper mist. An all-encompassing tide of color demanding justice ebbs back and rushes forward against the receding white circle, their voices lost to a higher purpose. Swarms of platinum-plated dragonflies hurricane above the fray blocking the sun in a whirl.
“Bil ruh, bil dam, nifdiki ya Falastine!” 
Cid and Aylul look over their shoulders at me. We recognize the penumbral moment for what it is. Being the largest, Cid takes mid-point, and together we link arms before walking into the maelstrom of twisted faces. Humidity rises the deeper we push, limbs catching limbs like bramble. I can barely see the boy waving the white flag just ten meters away, brow arced, teeth bared in a scream swallowed by screams. Someone punches a girl in White square in the teeth, knocking her bloody to her knees. Another protester shoves her back, and with that the link’s broken and the crowd comes pouring through. An older gentleman pleads with the boy on top of the ladder to come down, but before he can, a protester kicks the ladder out from under him. He falls sideways, briefly suspended in the air grasping out for a sun eclipsed by a hundred unblinking eyes before gravity claims him to the crowd below. 
Keeping my knees bent to sway with each lean and shove, I crane my neck to check in on the Israeli line. I have to blink twice to make sure I’m seeing things right, but sure enough, they’re laughing. Some double over, leaning on their partners for support. As if the theatrics weren’t enough salt on the wound, none have their weapons readied. Cid tugs at our laced arms, leaning into my ear. 
“On me,” he shouts, “Aylul wants to get the kid.” 
Of all the unexpected things to happen at these protests, Aylul guiding us to rescue a TFO brat isn’t something I would’ve wagered. To them, the only thing worse than Zionists is a Palestinian uncommitted to the Cause. It’s difficult to breathe as we shoulder and elbow our way through to where the boy was last seen. A woman in a suit grapples with a schoolboy who accidentally elbows Cid in the jaw. He barely flinches but spits blood back on the kid’s shirt and continues through the crowd. The toxic black smoke of burning tires grows strong enough to blur my vision. Lucky my stomach’s had a lifetime ingesting this shit not to go sideways on me now. 
Aylul stops to pull us close. The boy who was once on top of the ladder is sprawled on the ground inches from our feet, eyes obscured by bulbous bloody puffs of broken sockets. I think he’s dead until someone steps on his chest, causing him to convulse and wheeze. Aylul scrambles on all fours to lift him up. Cid bends over to help. I clasp my fists together and use my forearms as a barrier against the thrashing protesters. I’m not even sure if they know why they’re here anymore. Do they know this is Ayn Yassin?
From the corner of my eye, I notice a man standing still amid a crashing wave of bodies. He’s facing me, and for a moment I think he’s staring back until I realize he’s looking through me to where the IDF soldiers observe the fighting. He looks like many of the other outskirt men in attendance here: tired sweat bleached taqiyah stretching over a wrinkled head; dishdasha draped over bones. There’s something uncanny: His beard isn’t moving with the motion of his body. In an instant, a flailing arm from a protester goes through the hairs like gliding over water. Pixelated ripples of artificial light reverberate across the mask, breaking the illusion just long enough to witness the lie in sapphire eyes, shrapnel scars like acne from temple to cheek. The image adjusts and snaps into place.
Then I’m positive he locks eyes with me and winks before lifting a modded Desert Eagle with both hands to shoot. The concussive snap deafens those in the immediate vicinity. Many drop to their stomachs as panic tangles outward through the masses. What was once a school of fish is now a scattered outbreak of people not knowing what they’re escaping. 
Cid and Aylul get back on their feet with the beaten boy hanging between their lopsided shoulders. I vaguely hear them yell my name over the chaos, but there’s a pop, pop, pop, pop that seizes my attention. Occupiers with guns raised hip level take tighter formations. One of their own is on the ground, blood pooling the dirt into clumps of mud. Another soldier slides to their knees lifting him up in their arms. That’s when I see a hole fit for three fingers where his eye used to be. A teargas canister activates not far from where we stand, searing my eyes to water. Bile burns my throat. I swallow the sensation, looking back for the shooter one last time in vain. So I move to relieve Aylul of their burden. The boy’s shirt is in tatters, damp with blood, smells like he pissed himself. 
“We’ve gotta go,” I shout just as the pop of teargas turn into the crack, crack, crack of live gunfire aimed skyward, ricocheting off the dragonflies back into the crowd. I toss Aylul my keys to the truck and haul the boy with Cid in a weighted sprint. He’s heavier than I thought and after a dozen clumsy steps, Cid pushes me away to fireman-carry the boy over his shoulders. I run ahead as an escort shielding them from protesters as best I can. We’re nearly out when a barrel-chested man bulldozes me out of his way, knocking the wind out of me as I fall to my back. 
Panic to regain my breath turns to fear of being trampled, but I’m immobilized as my lungs gasp for air. I somehow manage to roll on my stomach so I don’t get kicked in the face, but my vision’s a saturated pulse of disfigured legs running in opposite directions. I spit congealed dust, chewing, coughing the grit from my mouth. When a semblance of balance returns, the face of a woman in white sharpens into view; black tangled hair covering half her face, mouth slightly open as if there’s a word on the tip of her lips. No light in the dark of her eyes, downcast and unblinking. I follow her line of sight to a hand over a cauterized tunnel clean through her chest. It’s tough not to puke. I scream instead. Not this shit again. 
A hand grabs me from the wrist and yanks. If they catch me now, they’ll use me as a scapegoat. I’ll spend the rest of my days in a cage that isn’t open air like this. With my free hand, I reach behind me and grip the acrylic handle of my .22, rip it free, and aim at the silhouette. I squeeze the trigger and nothing happens. How could I forget? The blurred figure disarms the gun from my hand with a slap as I scurry back with my legs when Aylul comes into focus.
“You forgot the bullets.” They’re covered in splatters of dried blood dust like we’ve been at this a while. They reach a hand out to help me up as if I didn’t nearly end their life. “It’s fine, hey-” they kneel beside me face to face and clasp my shoulder, “I’m fine. But we have to run. Now.” 
The agency in Aylul’s voice anchors me away from the guilt enough to grab their hand and stand on my feet. They press the pistol back in my palm and smile, of all things. I’m shaking but manage to stow it as I gain my bearings. Over half the crowd has vanished, running in any direction away from Ayn Yassin. The news cameras in the sky shield those who remain from an all-out massacre. IDF begin making arrests, tossing hexagonal grenades that expand on impact like five-meter boiling warts radiating cerulean light. The crowd-controlling ultrasonic domes are enough to immobilize a baker’s dozen. Ayn Yassin’s screams hush under the muffling savagery. I leave the dead woman, taking Aylul’s hand home back to the truck. Cid’s already in the backseat with the boy from earlier who’s laid horizontal, head on his lap. 
“He’ll live,” Cid says, “but that might change if we don’t get him to a hospital soon.” 
Aylul nods, whipping the truck around back towards Ramallah. In the rearview mirror, Cid’s looking down at the boy whispering something I can’t quite hear, but it sounds like the scathing words of a worried father. In the growing distance, black smoke and white gasses obscure Ayn Yassin from sight.