Burial of a Doll

It happened for a moment. A fleeting one.

Not when she was pulled out from the rubble of what was once her home. At that moment she stared around blankly, a shell, a lifeless body.

Her forearm was bent in the middle, the bone protruding, but she didn’t show any sign of pain. Neither did she feel for the wound on her forehead. Her tiny fingers, of her one good hand of her one good arm, were holding on to something. Tightly.

The hands that pulled her from under the rubble and placed her a short distance away, not on a stretcher but over more rubble, went back to work. She focussed all her being on these hands, on every broken piece they moved.

There were shouts and screams all around but her ears, full of a mad screaming static, didn’t hear any. Buried under that constant scream in her ears was a voice. Her own voice. The last few words she had managed while pulling at her father’s hand. ‘Baba, my Elsa.’

Her nose was covered with dust, like her face, like her body, the dust through which that streak of blood from her forehead was slowly making its way down. But her nose didn’t notice the smell of death that surrounded her. For now, it was holding on to the smell of her father, that last whiff she had caught as he had wrapped himself around her before it became dark and before the smell of burning flesh filled the air.

On her tongue a taste lingered. Of that last date. For months her father had carried it wrapped in a piece of foil. Saving it. Cherishing it. Waiting for the right moment, if a moment can be right in their world gone wrong. And when her siblings wished her happy birthday, he had pulled that date out. Those six tiny pieces of one date was all the love and kindness he was afforded this day, this life. She was the first to get the piece, but they all kept that piece on their togues, not chewing, not swallowing, as if they knew.

And in a heartbeat, and in their skeletal bodies the heartbeats were a faint thing these days, it was all gone.

Elsa was with her. In the darkness. A comfort.

And then those hands plucked her out.

But the darkness still surrounded her. The light inside her was fading. The taste on her tongue was fading. The words in her ear were fading. The smell of her father was fading. The grip of her one good hand was weakening. It was almost time.

Then it happened.

The hands clearing the rubble found a doll, a short faceless rag with one little arm and threw it aside in their rush to keep looking for life—a prayer unanswered in this place these days.

“Elsa,” she cried out.

In that moment her arm screamed in pain, her mouth tasted blood and dust, her nose knew the burning smell, the scream in her ears found its pitch, her good arm rose, her palm opened and the other arm of the doll fell, her eyes blinked the blood away as they followed the journey of her doll in the air.

It happened for a moment. A fleeting one.

In that moment before the second missile hit that rubble, she was alive once again.