It was eleven twenty am. On December 27,2008 when Yahia, 12 years old, was about to leave for his school after failing to persuade his mother to allow him be absent from school. His mother insisted that he should go as the final exams of the first semester were close at hand. She did not want him to miss the revision lessons. However, he eventually missed the rest of his days on Earth. His mother had never been prepared to experience such trauma. 

Yehia walked only a few steps from home to school. The moment he got close to the Preventive Security Headquarters at Tall Al Hawa, a missile shot by an F16 hit the building and sent sharpnel that pushed him prostrate and dead underneath the wall of the headquarters. He was carried back home on people’s shoulders after a long and tiresome search for his body under the rubble.

Yhia’s body will, God willing, go to paradise as a martyr and nothing remains but the tearful eyes of those who loved him and the hearty moans of the final farewell. His mother said,” I had that hunch that something must have befallen him when the Israeli fighters pounded the Preventive Security Headquarters nearby.” However, she had not lost hope of finding him alive in one of the hospitals. She went searching for him with his grandmother, his father and all his kin, but in vain. He was not among the martyrs sprawling on Earth.

Hours went by fast, Yehia’s mother wiped her tears, muffled the moans of her heart, returned home to wait. However, the grandmother continued with the family members to look for Yahia ; a search which lasted very long hours till the end of the day. She was overpowered by pain and exasperation for the absence of her grandson. Her own sons decided to take her home. Near the Palestinian Red Crescent building, at Tall Al Hawa, she got out of the car to go home. Meanwhile, her sons went on their way to resume the search. On her way home, she noticed there was a fallen wall with something black underneath. Her heart told her it was Yahia. She called to her husband and sons, but none heard her.

The grandmother asked a civil defense officer who was trying to find martyrs under the rubble. The officer told her no martyrs were there and the black thing might be a plastic bag. Yahia’s brother was accidentally passing by. The grandmother begged him to examine that black thing underneath the rubble. At first sight, they saw a black jacket. When the civil defense staff started to remove the wall rubble by the bulldozer she said to them, “ His family has lost him, please, don’t rip his body.” The grandmother begged them to join hands so as to remove the wall remains. There underneath lies her beloved grandson, Yahia. He eyes filled with tears and a cry of pain escaped her mouth.

Yahia was the third child of his mother, but to her he ranked first as he was obedient and benign. She till laments losing him and keeps saying, “ He had promised to adorn my with the crown of his memorizing the whole Noble Qur’an, but, alas!, he has gone without memorizing it all. He had learnt seven parts only and stopped at the last verses of the Ana’m Sura.

Yahia’s mother still hears his voice reverberating in her ears reminding her of his dreams of growing up to be a computer engineer as he had always been a very high achiever throughout his schooling years. He was dreaming of becoming one day an inventor of some electronic devices but his dreams were shattered by the fatal electronic air-to-land missile.