Winning stories 2026

The therapist talks and her words are like an untuned orchestra; discordant,

jangling, incomprehensible. As always, in this country, I feel I am

communicating from behind a rushing waterfall. But the interpreter listens and turns to me. She translates.

‘Imagine a line that represents your life. All the way from birth to now.’ She

points to the ribbon on the floor. ‘We will start at the beginning and you will tell the events. A flower for the happy things; a stone or candle for the sad.’ She gestures to the collection of different sized stones, half-burned candles and plastic flowers. ‘You choose which to place on the line for each event. And we will give it a title, a location and a date.'

The therapist smiles. She nods. ‘You see? It is a timeline. To help us understand your journey here.’

My journey here. Reduced to plastic flowers, melted wax; pebbles from a

foreign beach.

‘Let us start with your birth in Sudan, ’ the therapist says. ‘Let us give it a date – 2002, I think?’

I nod.

‘And what would you like to call it?’

The therapist sits with her pen poised above a yellow post-it note.

I wonder what she wants me to say. Potential? Hope? But it was neither of these things.

‘Pain,’ I say. Because, for my mother, it was.

The interpreter translates. The therapist draws marks upon the paper and places it solemnly on the line as if it means something. But it is unintelligible to me. When she asks, I choose the smallest stone.

My childhood – however – is a flower. It is the sound of dallouka music spilling through my bedroom window at night; my mother’s laughter as she sits drinking jabana coffee with the other women; it is celebrating Eid: sesame sweets, kunafa and mint tea. But I don’t tell the therapist this. I just give her the title and the date. And the village: Um Gunja, outside Nyala. I don’t tell her my village no longer exists. That it was destroyed by fire shortly after we left.

And so it begins. The cascade of stones; her questions birthing each bitter new episode in my life – all of them neatly packaged, labelled with her foreign words, placed carefully on the line. The war. The hunger. My father leaving to fight. The loss of my baby sister at just one day old. My mother’s illness. Our exodus to Nyala. Inexorably, they build to the biggest event; the one I have learnt to dread.

I choose the largest stone. Nyala. August 2023.

I am supposed to name it. But I cannot say the words.

I feel my body shake; the fear, like a pit of writhing snakes in my stomach, and I am back there. I hear the shells falling, watch from the window as my

neighbours run, hardly visible in the all-encompassing dust; grey ghosts with bundles on their backs which could be their belongings, could be their children. Many of them fall in the street; many don’t get up. I hear my mother moaning from the bed.

At last, a pause in the shelling. We can wait no longer. ‘We have to leave!’ I call to her. But she is so weak, so pale. Her jalabiya is caked in sweat; I see the dark circles under her arms. Still, I pull her to her feet, give her water while she stands swaying, pull her Tarha over her head, tuck it in as best I can. Outside, there is rubble and she stumbles; at one point falling face first in the dust. She is like a dead weight as I heave her up, but I have to keep her moving. I can hardly see where I’m going. I don’t recognise the streets. We follow others, all fleeing, all coughing with the dust.

Then, running towards us from the opposite direction, a group of women; their red-rimmed eyes frantic beneath their hijabs. I turn back to look at them. One shakes her head at me, gestures for me to follow, but it is too late. I am grabbed by the arm and pulled into an open square, my mother stumbling behind me. I recognise the insignia of the RSF and my heart drops to the bottom of my stomach. There are other soldiers standing there. And a row of civilians kneeling in a line, rifles pointing at their backs. Even as we are pulled across and flung down next to them, I see an elderly man knocked to the ground with a kick to the head. I cannot unhear the crack as the thick boot makes contact with his skull. He is still, as if asleep. I am aware of my mother trembling beside me. She is so weak, she is trying to support her weight with her arms. She moans, gently. I will her to be silent. Please, Ommah.

A soldier is pacing behind us – perhaps the leader – up and down, shouting

angrily over the top of our heads. ‘Traitors,’ he says. ‘Who are you runningfrom? You have let the terrorists use your homes. You have let them sleep in your beds. Why should we care for you now?’

And a shot, cracking apart the sky. A body falls, further down the line. My

mother lets out a wail. ‘No, Ommah,’ I whisper. But he has noticed us. I hear his heavy boots, smell his sweat, know that he is right behind my mother, that his rifle is pointing at her head.

I turn to look at him, I beg, raise my hands. I cannot help myself. He smiles

straight at me and shoots. My mother falls to the ground, her eyes open in

amazement. I cannot unsee what I have seen. My mouth stretches wide but I am making no sound.

Nafisa.

A shell drops nearby. Rubble falls from all around, a cloud of dust obscuring the sun. For a while, there is chaos. I crawl around on the ground, searching for my mother. I am moaning her name. Then, arms grab me from behind. A stranger’s voice; a woman’s voice: ‘we must run!’ she says. And she pulls me to my feet. I stumble backwards, then turn and follow her, deep into the city. I am leaving my mother behind.

Nafisa.

It is the therapist. She is thrusting a peppermint-scented piece of cotton under my nose. She talks earnestly to me and the interpreter translates.

‘Nafisa, you’re here in England. It’s January 2026. Listen to the noise of the

cars outside the window. Can you hear the splashing of their tyres in the rain? You see the colourful posters on the walls? The photograph of the beach? Listen to the ticking of the clock. Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth. Look at my face. My lips moving. It is Friday 16th January 2026. You are here. In England. You are safe.’

I nod. I have been holding my breath and I take in a long, raggedy gasp of air. I cannot move my arms from where I have wrapped them around my shoulders. For a long while, I sit like that. Letting my eyes move round the room as she instructs. I am here, I say to myself. I am safe.

‘Tell me,’ she says, once I am calm, ‘what object would you choose to represent coming here? To England?’

It seems that – for now – we are putting my past on hold; the rest of my journey will be teased out another day, perhaps: the escape from Sudan; the walking across the Libyan desert; the boat to Sicily and sleeping under bridges inFrance. Perhaps it is just as well, for these more recent memories are covered in shadow, as if eclipsed by their proximity to the billowing dust cloud of the past.

The therapist leans forward. ‘On this land, there are reasons to live,’ she says gently.

I sigh. Think of the detention centre at Dover, of the people protesting outside the hotel, of the English flags strung across the lamp-posts, of the stultifying process of claiming asylum; a process with no end in sight, no guarantee of success.

The interpreter shifts a little in her seat. Is she embarrassed? I glance quickly at her face. Do you remember, I want to ask, the smell of the coffee beans, the

sandlewood and musk? How the Goraasa would melt in your mouth when you dipped it in the mullah? How the stars looked like crystals in a velvet sky and the banks of the Nile pushed out vegetation each year as easily as green paint from an artist’s tube? Do you remember El Wardi, the voice of Sudan, and how he could sing into our very souls?

But she lowers her lids, stares at her hand.

I lean towards the objects, pick up a candle. Then lay it at the end of the line. ‘Bikka,’ I say. And the interpreter translates it in English: Grief.

At three in the morning, the oven breathes like it’s got a secret.

My palms are tacky with dough. Real tack—flour paste at the wrists, a split knuckle that opens every time I tuck a seam under. The clock above the sink says 03:07. I’ve been awake since ten, shaping loaves in a room of stainless steel, humming fridges and the extractor’s tired throat-clearing.

Probation picked this place because it sounds wholesome. Artisan bakery. East London. Sourdough. Like a crust can scrub a record clean.

Halina stands with her arms folded, plaster on her thumb that’s been there all week, watching me ruin another boule.

“Too wet,” she says.

I don’t look up. If I look, I’ll start begging. Or performing. Either way, I’ll lose.

I turn the dough out onto the bench. It slumps, spreads, takes up space like it owns the place. I dust it, lift the edges, fold in from four sides the way she showed me.

“Again,” she says.

Her voice is flat, Polish vowels cut clean. Six weeks and I still can’t work out if she dislikes me, pities me, or hasn’t bothered to decide. She says almost nothing except corrections. Somehow, that’s more teaching than I’ve had in years.

Arson. Not “reckless” or “accidental”—proper. I burned my own bedsit. Nobody else inside. No one hurt. That’s what I told myself, like it made it neat.

The craving isn’t for fire. Not really. It’s for the moment after, when everything you built is gone and nothing can ask anything of you.

Halina taps the bench with two fingers.

“Fold,” she says. “Don’t punch.”

I swallow. Fold. Don’t punch. It shouldn’t mean anything. It does.

Behind the kitchen door is the shopfront. Narrow room, long counter, two café tables that don’t sit level. Chalkboard menu the owner hasn’t changed since I started. Streetlight leaks through the glass in a yellow smear. Outside, Mare Street—night bus, someone arguing with a pigeon, the usual.

I fold again. The dough tightens a little, like it’s learning. I hate how much I like that.

Halina takes the tray from me without asking. Her hands are small, square, quick. She moves loaves with a tenderness that isn’t sentimental. More like respect.

“Prove,” she says.

She points at the proofer. I slide the tray in and close the door. Warmth breathes out. Yeast doing its patient thing. I stand there a second too long, letting the heat hit my face. It’s not the same heat. I tell myself that.

Halina is at the oven, checking the digital display. She frowns. Presses a button. Nothing changes.

She says something in Polish under her breath—short and sharp—then looks straight at me.

This is where my body usually gets clever. Finds exits. Offers jokes. Offers apologies before anyone’s asked for them.

Halina nods at the display. “Thermostat dead. Oven hot. But… stupid.”

She pulls open the door. Heat rolls out, thick enough to have weight. My eyes water straight away. The inside glows. Fire you can work for. Fire with a wage.

My stomach tightens. The craving stirs like a dog that’s heard its name.

Halina drags a metal stool across the tiles. It squeals. She sets it in front of the open oven like she’s setting a chair at a table.

“You sit,” she says.

“I can—”

“You sit.”

She tears a page from a cheap notebook and tapes it above the oven:

FOLD, DON’T PUNCH.

COLOUR.

She points at the oven mouth. “Watch. Tell me when ready. Not time. Colour. You understand?”

I do. That’s the problem.

She’s trusting me with fire. Not a locked door I can’t open. Me. Sitting here, heat on my face, with my record ticking over in the back of my skull.

Halina scores the loaves. The blade flashes. A slash, quick and clean. She loads the first tray onto the stone.

“Look,” she says, not looking at me. “Now you look.”

I look.

At first it’s just dough in heat. Then the surface tightens. The slashes lift. Steam curls out, then vanishes. The pale turns honey, then deeper at the edges where the heat bites first. It changes in steps.

The craving comes, sharp as a thought: You could. You’re right there.

I clasp my hands between my knees. Stare at bread until my brain quits trying to make it into something else. Breathe in. Warm flour. Yeast. That faint sour note. Not smoke. Not petrol. My mouth tastes of old smoke anyway. I run my tongue along my teeth until it doesn’t. I keep it that way.

The crust darkens. There’s a moment when it’s perfect and then it’s gone.

“Now,” I say.

Halina’s hand pauses. She looks at the bread, not at me. Then she yanks the tray out with a practiced jerk. The loaves crackle as they hit the rack—small, alive sounds. She taps the base of one. Hollow. Right.

No praise. No smile. A nod. I didn’t ruin it.

Then she does something I don’t expect.

She hands me the first loaf, wrapped in a cloth. “Front. You.”

I take it. It’s heavy and hot through the fabric. The crust is blistered and perfect. I carry it through to the shop.

The lights are low. Outside, the black is thinning to grey. A fox crosses the road and slips between parked cars like it’s got a job. In the glass I catch my reflection—hairnet, apron, flour on my cheek. I look like someone playing at being decent. I also look like someone who might manage it.

I set the loaf on the front shelf. It sits there steaming. Doesn’t need anything from anyone.

Dawn at the window. Pale. Early. Out here, away from the clatter of trays and timers, the smell lands properly.

The smell of bread at dawn.

Not a memory. Just what’s happening.

Halina comes through, wipes her hands on her apron and looks at the shelf. The smallest nod. Easy to miss. Hard to forget.

Back in the kitchen she shuts the oven door. Twists the dial hard, like that’ll fix it. Takes a key from the hook, pockets it. Then stops. Puts it in my hand.

“Lock,” she says. “I go smoke.”

It lands like a brick. The key is warm from her fingers. The oven is closed now, but the heat sits in the room, hanging about. My hands want to do something—anything—to take charge.

Probation loves “wholesome work” until it involves actual fire. Funny that.

Halina is already out the back, cigarette lit before the door clicks shut.

I stand there with the key in my palm.

I could lock up. I could make a small, nasty decision and call it fate. I could open the oven, let the heat out, let the story write itself.

Instead, I set the key on the bench, by the flour tub. Away from the blade. I fold my hands together and keep them there.

The oven breathes on. The fridges hum. The street starts waking up.

And I wait for her to come back.

     On October 16, there are reasons to live.

     These are the words she writes in the leather-bound journal she buys after her appointment. She attended the appointment alone, knowing there’d be no pleasant surprises, not wanting to share it with anyone else, not even Caleb.

     She purchases the journal from the bookstore next to the clinic.

     Then she dashes across the glistening pavement, leaps over a plug of maple leaves blocking the storm drain and ducks under the green canvas awning of Café Amico Mio. Dashing, leaping, ducking: all things she used to do without a second thought.

     She often has second thoughts now. Since her third pregnancy, every

physical movement carries with it the small but meaningful risk of a bit of pee, something all her female friends experience but don’t admit to each other, as if by unspoken agreement. They are in their forties, still clinging to the edge of youth. Bladder leakage is a conversation for their fifties.

     Today, she doesn’t think twice; she thinks continually. She revels in the

power of her legs, the percussive slap of her runners on wet asphalt; she marvels at the height of her jump; she observes the eddy of water from above and wonders at the feat of human coordination that enables her to land on one foot, pivot and transfer weight to the other while avoiding the scalloped edge of the awning. She’s never been an athlete, but in that moment, she is sprinter, dancer, acrobat, triple jump competitor, all at once.

     Water slithers down her neck. Inside, she orders a cappuccino, flattens the journal open, and watches rain track patterns across the fogged glass to the lilting cadence of the two baristas behind the bar.

     1. Coffee steam on my eyelashes.

     2. The unpredictable course of water.

     3. Young women laughing.

     4. The scent of leather.

     On the way home, she stops at the wharf, where a fisherman sells his catch from the back of a boat. Clouds have descended so low she can’t discern sea from sky. Salt brine cures the air. She inhales deeply because for all she knows it may cure other things, too.

     5. Dungeness crab with butter and garlic.

* * *

     Despite good intentions, she doesn’t write every day. Sometimes, she’s tired. Sometimes, her fingers can’t grasp the pen.

     Yet in mid-December she wakes to sunlight and the muted sounds of winter holidays and French toast, and she has a flash of insight: when she’s gone, she’ll listen to their bickering and teasing from beyond the veil, and it will be all right.

     For now, she reaches for the journal on the bedside table.

     On December 19, there are reasons to live.

     1. A kaleidoscope of frost on the windowpane.

     2. CBC Radio and the Vienna Boys Choir at the Wiener Konzerthaus.

     3. Maple syrup.

     She feels for her slippers with her feet. They’re in the right place, like her

robe, which now hangs on a hook beside the bedside table within easy reach. These are some of the minor adjustments Caleb has made since the ALS diagnosis. Each night he repositions her slippers, hangs her robe. Recently, he removed the rag rugs from the hallway and installed a ballet barre all the way to the kitchen—at least, that’s what he called it when the girls asked, and now the accepted mode of travel to breakfast, even for Caleb, is plié, relevé, frappé, grand battement.

     She pads into the bathroom, closes and locks the door, and takes inventory. Hand on the sink, she does a tentative plié of her own, testing the right leg, then the left.

     Two weeks before, when she stood up from the toilet, her left leg didn’t bear her weight. She fell, bruising her hip and ribs against the bathtub on the way down, then lay with her cheek on linoleum as clean as you’d expect with three girls and a husband who don’t see hair on the floor or dirty Q-tips under the vanity or mold along the bottom edge of the shower curtain; who don’t understand that cleaning a toilet means getting your hands dirty, wiping down the porcelain base and the walls, not just swirling a scrubbie around the bowl. On the bathroom floor, she wept over things she could have taught them but that weren’t worth teaching now—not when the window of time was closing, leaving room for only the slimmest shaft of light.

     That’s how they found her when Caleb shouldered the door open: bruised, weeping, pajama bottoms around her ankles. The girls pushed into the tiny room behind Caleb, who lifted her under the arms, taking her weight. Mallory tugged up her bottoms. Ava flushed the toilet. Vanessa watched with wide eyes, silent and uncertain.

     That night, they argued about the lock.

     It’s about Safety, said Caleb.

     No, she said. It’s about Independence. Freedom. Solitude. A locked

bathroom door is the three minutes a mother dreams for herself. It sustains her. If she doesn’t lock the door one morning, the possibility of locking it the next morning carries her through the day. Without the promise of a locked door, there’s only Obligation.

     Caleb repaired the door frame and replaced the lock.

     4. Winning an argument.

* * *

     The winter wasn’t the respite she hoped for. In January, the hot water tank blew; Ava’s room flooded. In February, the cat was hit by a car. Mallory risked life and limb running into the road to retrieve the creature’s broken body. Caleb dug the hole at night because within city limits dead animals aren’t on the list of what you can legally bury in your backyard. Mallory finally slept, ribcage shuddering with phantom sobs; outside, Caleb’s breath glowed in the beam of the headlamp. She thought, What will he do when I’m not here? The answer welled up in her chest like groundwater after a sudden thaw: He’ll miss you, but you aren’t required. In some ways, she was already a ghost. She inhaled the scent of Mallory’s hair, pushed herself to standing with her cane.

     In March, her GP confirmed what they already knew. The disease was

progressing faster than anticipated.

     Have you made plans? he asked them.

     Yes, she said, glancing at Caleb. But there are still reasons to live.

     Good, said her GP—perhaps in response to their estate planning, perhaps in celebration of her reasons.

     1. A new kitten—or maybe two.

     2. My youngest child.

     It’s Vanessa who feeds her the piece of toast that triggers the fit of coughing that brings Caleb running from the kitchen. It’s Ava, voice shrill with panic, who sends Vanessa scuttling down the hallway in tears. It’s Mallory who turns on Ava, then Caleb, with an anguish that reflects the stark truth they all face: every swallow, every breath taken, every gesture of love, every act of defiance exists in the shadow of disease.

     That night, she and Caleb consider a feeding tube. She’s already lost thirty pounds. Even the thought of food is exhausting.

     3. But toast with raspberry jam.

* * *

     At some point, she stops sleeping. Caleb usually comes to bed late—after

laundry and lunches, emails to teachers, depositions and trial notes, care

instructions for the day nurse. She listens to his even breathing, wonders what it will be like to go to sleep and not wake up.

     Sometimes she replays in her mind the long weekend in May: Ava and

Mallory away at camp; Vanessa in bed after a swim at the rec centre with Caleb’s mother. Caleb shuts down his computer early and crawls under the covers, pulling her hips into his, cupping two small eggs—all that’s left of her breasts—in his warm hands. She’s no longer beautiful, not much more than flesh wrapped around the remains of a few organic systems, but her unbeautiful body responds in ways that remind her what beauty feels like: a thin, wet bead of heat tracing its way along her ribcage to her hip, across her inner thigh, coaxing her from hibernation, nudging her up, urging her on, once more, once more, once more—

     1. Orgasm.

     2. The call of an owl before dawn.

* * *

     In late July, her GP makes a house call to discuss options: pain management, hospice, medical assistance in dying. She nods or shakes her head. Inwardly, she marvels at how little is required of her.

     Only when the doctor starts turning the pages of his calendar, considering this date over that, does Caleb grab her hand. She glances at his face, recognizes the tightness around the eyes. She squeezes his fingers. She wants to assure him: There are reasons to live.

     But she knows that for her there’s only one reason left.

     1. You don’t want me to die.

     It’s good she never wrote that in her journal. She prefers to go out on a

happier note—like the call of an owl before dawn.

Read more by Jillian: www.jilliangrantshoichet.com,  or follow her on Instagram: @jilliangrantshoichet

As I was packing up my things to head home, I heard the usual chorus of good wishes from my co-workers. “Have a good evening, Noura.” “Be safe.” “Peace be upon you.” That last blessing —“As-salamu alaykum” in our tongue — is more often a greeting than a farewell. But among us in this room, it is an encouragement at the end of a shift to leave the burdens of the day behind and find rest. As if that were possible. 

I was almost out the door when I heard Amira, my dearest friend, announce to the room, “They’re shooting at a car with a little girl inside.” In our work as dispatchers with the Palestine Red Crescent Society, we hear trauma and tragedy around the clock, but those words touched me like nothing else. I sank into the chair beside Amira and picked up the extra headphones beside her. Riveting her tear-filled eyes on mine, she gave a nod that conveyed gratitude. 

“They’re all dead,” said the young voice on the phone. She was five years old and the only survivor of an Israeli tank attack, which had claimed the lives of her aunt, uncle, and four cousins. “I’m scared. Please don’t leave me. I’m all alone.”

“I won’t hang up,” Amira assured her. “What is your name?”

“Hind Rajab Hamada.”

“Do you go to school?” Amira asked.

“I’m in the butterfly class,” she said. I watched a tear slip down Amira’s cheek. “Come get me, please. They’re shooting at me.” There was panic in the little girl’s plea, but also a measure of remarkable calm for one so young.

“My love, hide under the seat. Take a breath and close your eyes for a little. We will be there.”Amira’s voice broke as she spoke these words. She reached for my hand and squeezed it hard. 

Our colleague Omar determined that Hind was just eight minutes from a hospital in Gaza, but we all knew it would take a long time to get clearance from the Israeli military to send an ambulance. Hanging on our wall were pictures of our many rescue workers who had lost their lives while carrying out such missions.

Omar looked at me and said with concern, “You should go home.” I nodded. But my legs wouldn’t move. I could go; but I couldn’t. I knew Amira would stay on the line with that little girl for as long as it took, and I was going to stay right there with them. 

I listened for almost half an hour, and then I knew I needed to think of something else for a while, something happier. I turned to a cherished memory, a conversation my beloved Hashem and I shared about a year and a half ago, one of our first. 

“I like poetry,” he had announced.

“What is your favorite?” I wanted to know. 

“The writings of Aeschylus.”

“Was he not a playwright?” 

He smiled. I think he was impressed that I knew. “Ah,” he said, “a poet masquerading as a playwright.”

“Of course you would love the ancient master of tragedy and dramatic flair,” I responded, rolling my eyes. He laughed his great laugh.

Hashem was a journalist, documenting first scores, then hundreds, then thousands of people killed in the Israeli assault on Gaza. Far too many were children. He was attracted to the drama of pursuing and exposing truth. I just wanted to do something helpful.

“Shall we recite a psalm from the Quran together?” I heard Amira say.

Hind repeated each verse after her, and the poignancy of it was almost more than I could bear. “When are you coming to take me?” she asked as soon as they had finished.

The minutes crawled by. Omar eventually reached Hind’s mother, Wissam, and patched her into the call. She told her daughter, “I love you, and daddy loves you. We all love you, sweetheart. Stay safe.” Her voice cracked as she asked, “Hind, are you injured?”

“Yes. I am shot in my arm, my back, and my foot. My foot and arm and back are bleeding…” Then came a terrifying silence. Amira asked Hind why she had stopped speaking. The line remained quiet. Amira and I exchanged fearful glances.

She tried again. “Why aren’t you speaking, my love?”

“Because my mouth is bleeding.” 

This raised our concern, but we breathed a shared sigh of relief that she was still with us. The sky was beginning to grow dark beyond the window. The clock on the wall showed that almost two hours had passed. We desperately needed to get help to this brave little girl. 

I escaped for a brief moment again, into my favorite memory of Hashem. He believed that the way to bring peace to our land was to understand one another, especially the faiths that inspire us. He learned Hebrew, visited Jewish archives and studied Torah. He wanted to see St. Catherine’s Monastery in Egypt, which houses a vast collection of ancient Christian manuscripts and icons. To entice me, he told me that camels and their guides leave from outside the monastery in the middle of the night, carrying people to the top of Mt. Sinai. “It’ll be fun,” he said.

It wasn’t the honeymoon I had in mind. “It’s for tourists,” I teased him. But he wasn’t wrong about it being fun. I still see clearly the moment our camels slowly lifted from the ground on their long, dusty legs, bellowing loudly, sending us swaying high into the air. Hashem, who faced tanks and bullets and bombs seemingly unafraid, had a look of terror on his face. I laughed as we started up the mountain under an eyelash of a moon and a canopy of stars, strewn across the cobalt sky like brilliant gems.

“The ambulance is coming to you,” I heard Amira say for the third time, each one less convincing. 

“Please come. I’m afraid of the dark.” 

Hind’s voice was growing fainter. We were losing her. I was caught in a swirl of anguish and outrage. Why, oh why, do they want to destroy us? She’s just a girl. Help us. Please.

“My love, wipe your mouth and tell me if you are still bleeding,” Amira directed Hind.

“I don’t want to get my shirt dirty, so I won’t trouble my mom.” 

Wissam’s voice broke again as she said, “It’s okay, wipe your mouth and I will wash it, my sweetheart.” 

As the clock ticked toward three hours from our initial contact with Hind, her voice disappeared again. This time it did not come back. Israeli officials finally permitted our paramedics Yusef and Ahmed to go to her. Not long after they were dispatched, their voices also disappeared. Exhausted, Amira collapsed into my arms, and we wept together for what seemed like an eternity. 

Twelve long days passed before the Israeli Defense Forces left the area and granted access. The bodies of Yusef and Ahmed were charred beyond recognition, their ambulance crushed by a high-explosive shell. Fifty yards away was the car containing the decomposing bodies of Hind and her relatives…and 335 bullet holes. 

On that night that Hind was murdered, I staggered home in a daze of grief and fear. I thought back to the conversation Hashem and I had shared the evening before we wed. He had gazed lovingly into my eyes and said, “I can’t wait to start a family. We’ll have such beautiful children.”

It surprised me that we had never spoken of this before. But there was no need. Of course he would expect this. He held me as tears rolled down my cheeks. I hoped that he would think that I was moved by the future possibilities rather than terrified at the thought of bringing children into this cruel world, so violently arranged against our existence. Unable to find my voice, I wept in silence. 

But I believe Hashem understood. When he spoke again, he quoted his favorite poet-playwright, gently tracing my tears as he whispered, “Even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.” In that moment, I felt calm overtake me. And I knew that, with him at my side, it was possible to do even this. 

When Hashem was killed three months ago in an Israeli airstrike, one of scores of Palestinian journalists targeted for spreading truth, I committed those hope-drenched words of Aeschylus to memory, as he had. They were the benediction at his memorial service. Every day, I wonder how I will protect the life that is growing within me, without him by my side. But of this I am sure: If I give birth to a boy, he shall be Hashem. And if a girl, she will be Hind. And these two precious ones who have been lost will help me teach my child to be brave.