One Last Entry Before Death

The sirens woke me up. Those famous eardrum blasting, brain squeezing, joint tightening, deafening sirens. Those magnificent sirens that mean not an ounce of good news, not a droplet of joy, not a molecule of happiness. Those beautiful sirens that served as a warning for a mother’s, a soldier’s, a baby’s death. Those sirens woke me up this morning, just as they did yesterday and the day before that and the one before that, too. For as long as I can remember, those damn sirens would wake me up. What more can they do to me, those fools wrapped in the blue star on the white flag the same shade as the diseased. How much more can they take from me? They’ve taken my religion, they’ve taken my land, they’ve taken my job and they’ve taken my freedom. They took my father two years ago, my mother a year ago, my brother yesterday. 

Today, as the sirens wake me up, I try to sit up, but not too fast or the leg they blew up will get hurt. I get up slowly so the head of mine that they broke doesn’t scream out in pain. I get up slowly so I won’t suffer any more than I am already. I reach, with the hand that isn’t in a cast, to my bedside table where a selfless nurse placed a steaming cup of tea. Gingerly, I raise it to my mouth, and sip, focussing on the hot liquid drizzling down my throat. The planes should come soon. The majestic flying beasts that drop those pretty little pellets to the ground, which explode into a million little pellets, and kill a million little people. I look out the window and see my beautiful country, healing and rebandaging everyday. I see what looks to be a bird, though another glance and I can see that the planes have come. 

My death, along with those in my family and community, seem inevitable at this point. I am an old man, nearing eighty-one, with little life left to give. It gives me a bit of peace, at least, to know that when I die, I’ll die in my own house, the house I grew up in and the house of my mother. I don’t blame those Israelis for the hate in their hearts and the guns in their hands, I instead blame the world for letting it happen. I blame the world for causing the division that comes with the mystery above us, whoever He might be, if anyone. Now the plane outside is getting bigger, its shiny nozzle aiming directly at my heart. A few hundred meters from my window, it shoots upward to drop its gift, though not before I catch the pilot winking. I know what happens next, so I close my eyes and wait for my present to unwrap itself all over me.