6. október 2023

On this very day, October 6, 2023, our lives were heading in a completely different direction. We were preparing for one of the happiest nights our family had ever awaited — my younger brother’s wedding. The house was filled with laughter and excitement; my mother was busy giving instructions, while my father hung decorations by the door with a smile I had never seen before.

I still remember Sham — that little girl who brought the flavor of childhood even to the darkest moments — wearing the suit I had prepared for the ceremony, spinning around the room and laughing as she declared, “I’m the groom!” We all laughed with her, counting down the hours to a day we had long dreamed of.

But just a few hours later, everything collapsed. The sirens wailed through the city, and the windows shook under the first wave of explosions. It was the beginning of the war… a war we never knew would steal not just the wedding, but years of our lives.

In a single moment, the joyful ululations turned into cries of fear. Instead of hanging decorations, we were sealing windows with blankets, gathering what we could carry, and running to find safety. Time seemed to stop that night, as if happiness itself had been killed before it was ever born.

And today, two years later, the war still rages on. The wedding never happened, the decorations were never hung again. Yet a small spark of faith still lives within us — faith that joy will one day return, and that Sham will laugh again, maybe even wearing that same suit… but this time, in a world where bombs no longer fill the skies.

Zaki A Sharqawi