The Pledge of the Ten

Zeinab Essa

Martyrs: Samir Matout, Ahmad Shamas, Mohammad Nehme Yousef, Hassan Shokr, Mohammad Hassouna, Asi Zeineddine, Mohammad Youssef, Asaad Berro, and Jaafar al-Mawla.

Military warships were patrolling the colored sea's horizon to those crossing into shores of shelter... to sad people complaints, to the silence screams of confused people.

Only the deep sea is faithful to their secrets and embedding them within its waves. Whenever the waves drizzle on the sand, the water's tale carries their words sinking them into new waves born from winds stroking with their young dreams.

As young children, they used to run on shore's sand with bear feat. These waves that confronted their young fists, knew their strength in front of its craziness. Their strong will on their dark front's towers with every sunrise, and whenever the sunset raises its red sword to strike it in the heart of the sea.
Ten of the sea's sons they are: they were children when they sat on the boiling sand, planting their small palms and drawing a circle... a pledge of friendship born in the era of freedom.

When they grew up, their blood turned to fingerprints of loyalty.
They were always there.

Neither battleships nor military aircrafts and tanks spread at corners of the streets prevented them from touching their sea's drizzles on daily basis.

This sea is their homeland, to it they belong.

The waves didn't erase the small fingers, but rather went on immortalizing them. Maybe because the sea viewed that the fingers' heads were part of its history: Its honorable history, written with textures on their wounded bodies that left after removing from the sea's surface algae of hopelessness and defeat.

Long years passed.

The fascinating horizon is often penetrated by the wings of sea gulls.

The calm beach sleeps as a spring breeze between the light waves' turns, narrating the story of the Pledge of the Ten.

Nine had passed away, and one was left alone near a circle of tiny fingers and a sea in front ripping the vest of his gloomy solitude, alone with a sea of secrets, and an era full of memories that bleed the heart.

Whenever he searched for his heart he would find it on a rock entrapping from the past, crumbs teaching him some meanings of life. They left him a huge legacy, and lips were murmuring.

All what happened is easy as long as it is in God's Eye.

God's Eye has lightened their hearts, in the eerie darkness, making them follow the track of freedom and neglecting if they choose to die, or death chooses them.

God's Eye had once gathered them in Ouzai Mosque to vow moving in the Road of Jihad, and the pledge was: Martyrdom.

Ten they were, and as the spring of age longed between their palms, the riffle turned into grass, making days sleep on the mattresses of live rounds and struggle.

Their dreaming night turned into glitter in the working eyes monitoring the "Israeli" enemy's waters and sniping them in between their armory.

The scary war octopus devoured the place, turning it into distorted spot.

The sea turned into drizzles empty of dreams. However, life remained in their fingers.

They caught the coal and pressed. How patient they were in pressing on the wound, on bearing pain. They smiled.

They rushed into resistance operations' chances here, or ambushes there.

Some became leaders in the resistance and others were fighters, but the pledge remained.

Ten they were as a flower sprung in the crusty tank. A flower which petals disintegrated one after another, making the soil more fertile, and cracking softer from flames of flowing blood.

Nine martyred, and the remaining tenth touched the signs of victory with his fingers, drawing that circle on the beach.

The features of their young faces are still wandering in the corners of the place, touching the corridors of time, narrating the story of the Pledge of the Ten.

11-11-2011 | 12:00

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian   

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