Chapter 5 - In the tent... our hearts hide

The tent is not like a house. It is not like shelter. It is a torn cloth, shaking with every wind, and the cold dissolves in our bones. We were more than twenty people sleeping in it. No walls, no doors, nothing closed to our sadness. Everyone has something in it: a mother, father, child, house, or even memory. We no longer differentiate between day and night. No electricity, no light, just a ruthless frost. The Earth was always wet, and the cold lived in our stomachs. My father used to say: "We are patient, my daughter ... hunger or humiliation." We were burying our heads in dirty blankets whenever the occupation planes passed over us. And nothing protects. Nothing blocks death. I remember an old woman crying every night. I asked her: "Malik, aunt?" She said: "I am not upset at my home, but my son was martyred and what I have been stirred is his wind before they bury it." In the tent, we used to eat the like. Dry bread, boiled rice, sometimes nothing. And if the rain falls, the water entered the flour bags. My mom was setting fire from old aid cartons. In the tent ... there was no privacy. People are in pain in front of each other. Women cry without a veil, and men wipe their tears in silence. Even children stop playing. We are all great in fear. Some foreign delegations were going through, taking pictures, distributing a biscuit box, then leaving. As if the tent was not a temporary country ... but an endless long prison. At night, my mother was telling us about our home before the war. On the walls, on the balcony, on warmth. I was closing my eyes and imagining it. But I do not see it. All I saw in my life ... tents. Nevertheless, my mother used to say: "We will return, my daughter ... and we will build houses of pride, not from the brick." In the tent ... we learned that warmth is not in the heater, but in the heart that is patient. And we learned that honor is not destroyed by destroyed homes, but rather it is kept in an incomparable pain. In the tent ... we used to live, resist, and dream ... despite everything.