A Dead One Taking Shape in the Faces of the Living

The calendar turns its pages day by day, and the war continues relentlessly to steal pieces of us, without permission, and without return. Time is too weak to serve as a solution—to forget what we couldn’t bear to hear or what we weren’t ready for.

For about a year and a half, I have been unable to move past a certain piece of news. During that time, I have imagined my life without truly knowing it. Sometimes, I even wished not to know the truth and live in an illusion, because now I understand why ignorance is bliss.

It was a habit for me to touch base with my acquaintances and friends to know they are well. With them, I share my joy to grow and my sorrows to diminish. There was a person who is unique, whom you have only once in a lifetime, like a chance that can’t be repeated. She was a friend I called often to hear her voice and to find the meaning of life.

At the beginning of this war, I was texting and calling my friend—Shahed, but I received no answer. At that time the phone connection was really poor. It was hard to deliver or receive the two-words message "We survived," whether from my family or my friends.

Every now and then, I tried to call my friend Shahed whenever I remembered her, in the morning or at night, and when the connection was possible, but the answer was the same—there was no reply. I recall once withdrawing from the gathering of my uncle’s family, who had taken refuge in my home at that time, hoping to hear or see any news about Shahed, but after the same reply, a terrible thought haunted me—that she passed away. I put down the phone and left my place, trying to escape the thought of this probability.

I felt anxious about these calls, so I went to ask her cousin about her. The frightening thing was she had been reading my messages and didn’t reply a word! I left her as well, and still a shadow of hope drifted upon the sea of despair.

One random day, I was scrolling on my phone, and I saw what I had always dismissed—the thing I had been too afraid to even think of. Shahed’s cousin had published a story on Instagram: a prayer for a girl named Shahed, saying she had martyred. I stopped in her story, rereading the words meticulously. Maybe my eyes had scrambled the order of the letter’s name, or there was a typo in the words, but regretfully, I found no mistake, but hope couldn’t be lost so easily, so I decided the story couldn’t be about my friend.

I was chasing the shadow of a light in a cave, lying about what my eyes saw, and imprisoning evil thoughts that stuck in my mind. I wanted to stop this struggle, so I asked Shahed’s cousin about Shahed again, and I waited, as I always did—in every heavy moment, bracing my eyes to read anything. While she hadn’t replied yet, I went to pray Al-Asr prayer, and my sister was holding my phone at that time. She told me carefully, fearing to see the reaction that would appear on my face. She told me Shahd’s cousin had replied, so I asked her to read her message. She told me Shahed was martyred!

A tear welled in my eyes—refusing to fall. I sat on the chair, clinging to it as though it alone could steady my faltering balance. I sat, absent-minded, while my eyes could see only random forms merging into chaos. Now there was no escape as before, no more excuses; I had proof that she had been killed. I realized I had been searching for a glimmer of hope that didn’t exist. How I wished she hadn’t replied to me, leaving me without an answer that coiled around my neck!

I didn’t know where or when she had killed; I didn’t even dare to ask. And sometimes I thought it wouldn’t matter to ask; she simply passed away. I was in shock, holding my grief in my heart. Although I have received so much news of friends lost in this war—and the news still comes—I was neither willing nor ready to hear that "Shahed" was one of them.

Not long after—during the truce they had forged, after stripping us of peace—I was scrolling on my laptop, and I saw a video showing the recovery of martyrs from a shattered house, and suddenly I realized Shahed was one of them. She had been martyred along with her entire husband’s family. The crushing war had left no chance to bring them out earlier, but now they were finally being carried out.

Is this the manner in which we bid farewell to our dearest friends?! From a cold mobile screen, impenetrable to the hands that once caressed it, and deaf to the words that we shared at midnight. I couldn’t give her a final glance or attend her funeral procession—the least I could have done for her, but I couldn’t!

She moved away, but she still present before my eyes—in the faces I see every day. I see a girl who looks like her, like her little sister, like her brother—so many faces that remind me of her. The first time that I had seen a girl who seemed like Shahed’s sister, I stared at her in surprise, my heart throbbing with fear, while my mind urged me to rush forward to ask her about Shahed. But then I banished that notion and began to think of the same questions: whom would I ask her about? For a dead person? Is there any answer that could bring her back to life?!

I used to always mention to her a specific verse from the Holy Qur’an whenever she felt sorrow: { لَا تَدْرِي لَعَلَّ اللَّهَ يُحْدِثُ بَعْدَ ذَلِكَ أَمْرًا }

But now I want her to remind me of this verse, for I am the one who feels sorrow. Now, it’s too late; the matter has changed from my mentioning it to her to remembering her whenever I hear or read the verse.

She isn’t dead; she is present everywhere, in the faces of people around me, in my current diaries as she was in my childhood diaries, in the images and the paper letters that have become just heavy memories, in my dreams, in my prayers while I prostrate, and in every detail of my life!

When I learned this news, I refused to call or ask any of my acquaintances, for I am not willing to face the shock of another's loss. I preferred to live in the last moment, when we laughed together. I don’t want to see them bid me farewell from a far and dark place and to meet only their faces among the living people around me!