When the Israeli reconnaissance craft dropped a warning rocket onto the house of Ayman Siam in the district of Al Huga of Jbalia in the North of Gaza, all the house dwellers hurried out. The street passers by took refuge behind some barricades or lay prostrate on the ground lest they should be blown away by the strike’s violence, or have their bodies ripped by the torrents of the rocket grapnel. Tha-er was among those people but when he heard a lady crying and seeking somebody’s help to get her handicapped son out of the house to save him from death, Tha-er could do nothing but respond to that cry for help. Hastily did Tha-er go to the lady and her son. Yet, the rocket flying shrapnel was faster to get to his body. So he fell down covered in his own blood among the rubble.

The flames and smoke started to rise in the place. The dust blinded the vision of those standing around. However, Tha-er’s uncle saw him lying there. He carried him to the nearest hospital. However, his critical injury made the doctors decide to sent him abroad for treatment. His family took him to Egypt. But he died in the hospital bed after five days from day of his injury.

The hear of Tha-er’s mother filled with grief. She still remembers every minute she spent with him. Wherever she looked she saw him. Inside the house she felt his soul present around her as it used to do when he was humming with life and his face brightening with smiles.

The mother heavily sighed and said, “I miss him so much. Yesterday he was helping me with housework. He used to ask me to take it easy and stay comfortable. He did the housework for me. He used to sweep the floor there, and that pan is the last thing his hands touched and which he burnished before he went forever. He never let me out, tire myself out by doing housework, but he had gone.”

Tha-er was her first son and was the first to call her, “Mama” He was the first being to throb inside her womb. He was the first child she imbued with her love and kindness. To her, he was a son, a friend, whom she trusted with her whines and concerns. He also used to exchange the secrets with her. He had not trusted anybody else. In a grieving voice she said, “ I waited for his return, but he had gone.”

His youngest brother, Mohammed still goes to his grave where he would tell relate unfinished stories and ask him about their encounter and wish it were close by. Mohammed says in his yesterday’s quiet nap he saw Tha-er in white radiating beauty and brightness. He approached him silently, hugged him, and held him close to his bosom. Mohammed, then, swished he would not wake up so as not to lose his late brother’s hug.

The shrapnel quelled Tha-er’s dreamy heart and smashed his dream to be a computer scientist after his university studies in the area of programming and computer technologies. The shrapnel had also nipped his brain which was planning to open a center for computer maintenance and Internet services. He was snatched fast by death without seeing any of his dreams come and give him due pride.