“Al-Zain?”
An old man sitting outside on an upturned crate looked up and pointed toward the far end of the row.
She walked through a camp with no end in sight. Four hours. That was what the escort allowed. She became aware of how much space her own presence took up.
The tent flap was open.
An elderly woman sat near the entrance, facing the camp, her leg extended in front of her. The bandage around it had gone grey. In her lap, a pair of white shoes. Tiny. A crescent stitched on the side. Blood dried brown at the edges.
“Umm Khalid? Mariam Al-Zain?”
She looked up with an unblinking glare. Press vest. Notebook. Pen.
A nod. Nothing more.
Carissa sat cross-legged across from her. The silence between them was the pressurised kind. Not peaceful. Not empty.
“Hi, I’m Carissa,” she said hesitatingly, unclicking her pen.
Mariam looked at her for a long moment.
“You want me to tell you?”
“I will tell you.”
***
“Fourteen, ya binti. Fourteen of Al-Zain’s family. One night, and they were gone.”
She looked down at the shoes.
“Khalid, my son, my firstborn… detained. Where? Ya Rabb, only God knows. Every morning I ask, is he breathing somewhere? Or already in the ground with no name on his stone?”
“Every day, ya binti. Every single day.”
“Wafaa. Allah yerhama. Nine months she carried that boy while his father was gone. Every night she pressed her hands here…”
She placed both hands flat against her own stomach.
“…and she would say, your baba is coming. He will hold you. Wallahi, she believed it until her last breath.”
Her thumbs traced the dry brown edges of the stains.
“He did not come back. And the boy never breathed.”
***
They came before the dawn call to prayer.
They did not knock. They stormed in.
Wafaa was right there. Always the first to the door. Beige jalabiya. Hijab loose from sleep. Stomach enormous, life enormous inside her.
She tried to raise her arms.
“Please. The baby. Please.”
They kept shouting. Arms up. Arms up.
“She could not choose,” Mariam said, her voice breaking. “Her arms or her son. She kept choosing her son.”
The tears came. She did not stop them. She kept talking.
“I came out and stood in front of her. What else is there to do?”
She touched her leg without looking at it.
“One of them aimed low. Shot my leg. Just like that.”
“And then… right there, habibti, right there in front of me…”
She touched her own stomach. Flat. The way you touch something you cannot say out loud.
“She didn’t scream. That is what I cannot forget. She didn’t scream.”
“After that, they went. Floor by floor. Door by door. I could not move. I could only listen to my family going silent one by one above me.”
“Allah yerhamhum. Allah yerhamhum. Allah yerhamhum.”
***
“They didn’t leave. A watch from my husband’s drawer. Cash. A gold ring from my cousin’s finger while she was still warm.”
Her jaw tightened.
“One found Wafaa’s thobe, every stitch by her mother’s hand, and pulled it over his uniform.”
“And he danced. On her blood. They filmed it and laughed like it was a wedding.”
“This is not war. War has rules.”
She looked at Carissa directly for the first time.
“They were thieves who ran out of land to steal. So they came for what was left. Our gold. Our dignity. Our dead.”
***
The soldier moved to the windowsill.
Carissa watched Mariam’s hands tighten around the shoes.
“Khalid bought them before they took him. He held these shoes up and said, my son will walk every place I was never allowed to walk. Every border they put in front of me, Hamza will cross it.”
“That is all we wanted. Just to walk. Just to let our children walk.”
“The soldier picked them up.”
“Baby shoes. Never worn. For sale. Anyone?”
Laughter.
“Oops. Blood-stained.”
The words Carissa had seen in the caption. 470,000 views. Laughing emojis. Now said out loud, grinning, performing for the lens.
“And he dropped them. Right next to me on the floor.”
“I reached out,” Mariam said. “And I took them.”
“Nobody even looked at me. That is how much I mattered to them.”
***
She held the shoes out toward Carissa. Placing them between them like the last document of a family that no longer existed on any record.
“Write,” she said, fingers steady now. “You came here with your Western notebook, write. Let the world read what it laughed at 470,000 times.”
Carissa took the shoes.
She held them in both hands and felt their weight, almost nothing, which was everything.
She gave them back.
She thought about the story she would file tonight. The headline someone else would write. The readers who would feel something for thirty seconds, then scroll on.
She thought about Mariam still sitting here tomorrow. The day after. The shoes in the lap.
She had four hours.
She had used them all.
She opened her notebook to the very first page and wrote —
His name was Hamza. His father chose it.
***
She left without looking back.
Just a pair of white shoes in a lap.
Still unworn. Still waiting.
Fourteen names. One testimony. One pair of shoes.
Some grief has no audience.
It simply continues.
***
No.Of Words: 891
Image Courtesy: Canva AI-generated image
Glossary
Ya binti – Oh my daughter (Arabic term of endearment from an elder to a younger woman)
Umm Khalid – Mother of Khalid (Arabic custom of addressing a mother by her firstborn’s name)
Ya Rabb – Oh, my Lord (An Arabic invocation, a cry to God)
Allah yerhama / yerhamhum – May God have mercy on her / them (said for the deceased)
Habibti – My dear (A term of endearment used toward women)
Wallahi – I swear by God (Used to emphasize truth)
Jalabiya – long, loose robe worn by women across the Arab world, often hand embroidered
Hijab – a headscarf worn by Muslim women
Al-Zain – Arabic family name (meaning the graceful or the dignified)
