No one understands the relationship between a mother and death. It’s as if she has an agreement with it. Whenever death comes to steal one of her children she tricks it, delaying it temporarily. When her tricks run out, she tells death: take me instead of my child. Take me before my child. It has nothing to do with life’s natural trajectory. No one says that the mother, as someone who is older, must die before her children. But it’s an agreement that all mothers have concluded with death since eternity, and can be summed up as «take me before them.» Any exception to this is death’s betrayal of this eternal agreement.
This time, death betrayed Hajer.
Hajer is sitting in her new tent after the old one burned down last June in a fire at the Jarahiya refugee camp in al-Marj, a town in the Bekaa Valley. The fire destroyed 85 tents inside the camp, along with a medical clinic. The refugees lost their tents, their possessions, and all of their official papers. Hajer lost her tent, her possessions, her official papers, and «Hammoudi.»
Hajer, her husband and her two-year old Mohammad, or «Hammoudi,» had an early lunch that day. His father was being playful with Hammoudi, taking his picture on his mobile phone and eating from his hands. Hammoudi said «Mama» a lot. He used the word, which she loves, after finally learning it. She didn’t have to ask him to say «Mama» or entice him with a bar of chocolate to do so. He did it all by himself, as if compensating for the many coming days in which her will not call her «Mama» anymore.
After lunch, her husband went to the Monday market in the camp. Hammoudi played on his small red car and went up to the roof with his mother. He pulled on his mother’s abaya every day, to let her know that he wanted to go up to the roof. There he would take a handful of pebbles and throw them at the pigeons’ nests before calling her over: «Come here, come here.» Then, he would return to his tent.
Hajer tried to take a short nap shortly before noon, taking advantage of both of her other children being in school. However, her little boy doesn’t sleep and doesn’t let her sleep either. That day, and for the first time, he did what she said. He went to sleep, and she did also, on the sponge mattress next to him. And in the first place, sleep is training for the state of being absent. It’s the «sleep of death,» as Hajer calls it. Hammoudi fell asleep, and didn’t wake up again.
About 30 minutes later, Hajer went to the neighbors’. A few minutes passed before she and her neighbor went out and saw the tent, completely ablaze, as the flames spread to the neighboring tents.
Everyone panicked and tried, and failed, to put out the fire. The Civil Defense sent trucks to the camp more than two hours after the blaze broke out. The woman stood in front of the tent without moving, looking at the flames and yelling, «I killed him.»
Today as well, Hajer is crying, and saying, «I killed him.»
«I don’t know how God made me leave my son.»
She has taken sedatives since that day and tried to convince her husband and the neighbors that she didn’t kill the boy, but to no avail. Everyone blamed her and she blames God, and herself. Hajer can’t stop herself from crying and blaming God, who unexpectedly sent them the fire. None of the neighbors’ children was killed. God took Hammoudi in particular and she asks him how He can make it up to her - after she spent so much time with him, for raising him, and for bearing him. No one and nothing can compensate. Ibrahim and Fatima lost their little brother and Fatima always sees him in her dreams. In her last dream, Hammoudi cut his hair, went around all of the tents in the camp, and learned how to say her name.
Hajer didn’t see the body of her child, who was buried by her husband and the people from a nearby town. She spent two weeks with her own family in Barr Elias after the accident. When Hajer returned, she went to all of the tents in the camp; each one had come up with a different story of how Mohammad burned to death. She listens to all of the stories and once again asks herself, with only one question in her mind, «Did he suffer before he died?» She doesn’t ask God anything now – only whether He took Hammoudi from her with no pain; perhaps she will feel less guilty.
Time passes with difficulty for Hajer and it’s most difficult when it’s time to sleep. Mohammad no longer stops his mother from sleeping, but she doesn’t sleep. She goes to his grave every week, in the belief that visiting the deceased will comfort them. She lost all of Hammoudi’s things in the fire; all she has left are pictures of him on his father’s phone, and his voice, saying «Mama,» in her head.
Hajer will not forget her child and will not become used to his absence. Sorrow? It will never disappear. Sorrow disappears only when love does. As for us – who see this news every day – Mohammad will remain another unknown child who has passed away, joining the list of children who have died of cold, disease, or fire in the refugee camps from the beginning of the Syrian uprising until today. Later on, when Syrians obtain their freedom and return to their country, they will leave these children behind them. They were born in Lebanon and are buried here.