Sounds in Ni3lin

"'Boom, boom, boom;' Sittik says I was imitating the sounds of the bombs going off when Ariel Sharon was attacking nearby Qibya. I was a toddler--maybe two, maybe one. That was when we were in Ni3lin."

I snicker when I think of a baby Hatim. I have always considered my dad a handsome man, and going backward from now, quite a cute kid--at least, that's how the black and white photos depict him. I can't help but visualize a pudgy little bouton under a white, light cotton undershirt, khaki shorts, white socks, extra virgin olive skin, the nascent edition of his now bushy eyebrows, goo-gooing, "boom, boom, BOOM!"

The snicker is short and gives way to temporary paralysis--my eyes widen and lose any luster as I draw away from the present and am sucked into the crevices of my mind; my thoughts and my sadness; into a history that is mine by way of my father.

Maybe that's why Allah gave me black eyes--so that no one can really tell how far back I fall in these moments. I appear glazed and frozen, but I am not: Being this incensed can be likened to boiling water that burns so hot it stings like frostbite.

I bite my bottom lip and furrow my nose and brow as I fight the tears that I know will inevitably fall--but I have to make it harder for them to come. Fighting against myself, I look like I'm ready to unleash a wild fury that would have to be censored.

..."boom, BOOM"...

After all, to me, this baby is particularly special--this baby became my father; this baby, who learned how to make sounds by imitating bombs, became my Hatim. This baby was me before I ever was.

I wonder how many babies are in Ni3lin today, learning the sound of sound and of voice by imitating racist, murderous, criminal noise articulated by bombs and guns and tanks and F-16s. I wonder if any will experience a sonic boom, like their brethren in Gaza: A sound-knife twisting into the eardrums and slicing the silence of the night at random intervals--something that can be likened to a screech so jarring that it singes the follicles in the ear canal and leaves nothing except the incessant ringing of white noise. Everything will go silent as those babies and their mothers watch blood drip from their noses and feel their organs rattle inside.

.."boom, [sonic] BOOM"...

I wonder what sounds the little boy in the blue cap has been imitating...I wonder if he will be among the babies in Ni3lin who will actually live long enough to have children with whom they can share their first-sounds stories... And I pray that if he has that chance, his story will not start with "boom, boom, boom."