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By Sisu Sugo (Shish Mmm)
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Haifa—once a crown of civilization. Glass-clad skyscrapers had once kissed the heavens, gardens bloomed on rooftops, and magnetic trams hummed beneath polished streets. Now, the city was a mausoleum of ambition.
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The sky was no longer blue but bruised in shades of ember. Ash choked the wind, and firelight flickered in the craters where homes once stood. A burnt schoolbag lay beside a charred wall; its zipper half-open, revealing a small notebook that read in shaky Arabic:
*"One day I’ll become a doctor. I’ll make sure Abu never feels pain again…”*
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Near it sat a little girl—Zainab. She touched the notebook with trembling fingers, as if it might still be warm from a classroom that no longer existed.
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A Parade of Shrouded Ghosts
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In the city's heart stood thousands of children from Gaza. Boys and girls of every age—some barely walking, others already touched by years far beyond their time. Dust-cloaked but upright, they wore white **kafan**—the shroud of the dead—soft and tattered, glowing faintly like moonlight through mist.
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Their laughter rose not in mockery, but in defiance. They laughed not because they forgot pain, but because pain had forgotten to silence them.
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Zainab cradled her younger brother Hamza, his limbs limp, his eyes forever shut. She whispered softly,
*"Just sleep a little more, Hamza. There are no drones today."*
But Hamza no longer breathed. He hadn't for days. Still, she held on—refusing to surrender him to the silence of dust.
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The Language of the Divine
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A sudden brilliance tore through the smoke-hung sky. Not thunder, not fire—but light.
**Jibreel (Gabriel)** descended—wings wide like galaxies unfolding. His gaze carried mercy... and sorrow. As if to say:
*"Even in the heavens, we weep for you."*
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He walked among them, silent. In every child’s eyes he read stories:
A doll with no arms.
A mother’s scream just before the roof collapsed.
A half-eaten biscuit in a lunchbox never opened.
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Beside him walked **Azrael**, the Angel of Death—his form robed in twilight. He was not fearsome, but solemn. The children reached toward him, not to resist, but to return.
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One boy asked,
*"Can you bring back my Ummi?"*
Azrael spoke no word, only rested a hand over the boy’s head, filling the void with a warmth that had no earthly name.
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Playing with Ashes and Memory
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One girl knelt and drew on the ground with her finger—outlines of a village, a little store, her mother combing her hair.
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A boy ran up laughing,
*"It was my birthday today, but no one knows!"*
He wrote his date—**9th June**—on a corner of his shroud, in soot.
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And still they played—among skeletons of towers, beside the skeletons of dreams.
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They did not mourn like the living. They remembered.
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The Final Fire and the Gentle Ascent
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Suddenly, the earth shuddered as another missile struck. The shock rippled through the ruins—but the children did not flinch.
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Jibreel raised his hands in silent prayer. His wings unfurled like a veil, casting golden light across the ruins, as though to tuck the city into sacred sleep.
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Azrael touched each child on the forehead, one by one. With each touch, they smiled and lifted, slowly—light as dandelion seeds—ascending into the glow, vanishing into the air like incense.
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And when the last one had gone, there remained only the fluttering of empty shrouds in the wind. A single burned toy sat among the rubble.
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Beside it, scorched into the stone, were these words:
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"They will not play again. But they did not lose."
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The End
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