In Palestine,
the souls of two girls separated by death met again in Barzakh.
One was Zeinab, 11 years old.
The other was Khadija, 10.
Zeinab died on the first of September.
Khadija followed on 30.
Between them stretched a full moon.
Death itself wasn’t important.
They both understood that.
They had seen it too many times.
The problem was the afterlife of death.
In Judaism, this afterlife was called Sheol
In Christianity, it was Purgatory
In Islam, it was Barzakh
All three had different functions,
and since the three Gods lived close by,
in the same wounded geography,
the choice of afterlife became difficult.
Whose afterlife should they enter?
Whose language should they pray in?
Would angels check their names?
For the girls, the idea of the afterlife was never difficult.
It was the tryst with death they could not bear
the way it arrived uninvited.
Zeinab, who died first, was happy in Barzakh.
Her face had better glow
Khadija had no skin
Her body was a thin absence.
The hunger of one full moon was so intense
that she never complained of genocide.
When they met again,
Zeinab did not recognise Khadija.
How could she?
One was skin
One was skeleton
they both died by hunger
but stood apart by the full moon
the two children of the same sky.
