1- My rebelliousness cowered at the sound of bullets and teargas.
2- I stood behind my parents words and their fear of losing me in the mess.
3- Collapsing needs one to be standing.. but I was already lying down when my mother called to tell me about the news she was watching on TV.
4- I used the dirty matress in the hospital where I work as shelter… it didn’t shelter anything.
5- Detachment… was what I thought I’d be doing while clinching my phone so hard reading about who’s missing and who’s murdered.
6- I called Gaki’s phone so many times hoping he’d answer.
7- I called Mageed’s phone so many times and everytime it was off.
8- If transforming into a martyr… was what’s needed for this fucking revolution to win then take me instead. Bring back everyone who was there and take me… I can’t bear this burdening existence with its air clogged at the throat with so many souls ascending-.. no wonder suffocation was the only thing I managed to do with my lungs that day.
9- What’s good of chanting when everyone who’d chant with you is dead? What’s good of chanting if the ones listening are still deaf, still delaying their empathy or sympathy to people lost. To people not breathing anymore To people… drenched in mud and blood and courage, courage I could never carry in my heart.
10- When emotional pain starts numbing, it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t hurt anymore. It means I’m used to keep scratching where it hurts till it bleeds again then maybe… I’ll get a glimpse of the pain my friends felt when they were there. Where I wasn’t, While lying down in the comfort of my bed cursing this survival I didn’t ask for.
11- The purpose of all this was to live. Not to end up dead. Not to end up jaree7. Not to end up missing or losing what’s left of your sanity or hope or soul or will to live.
12- Invulnerability is a fucking previlidge.
13- Existing… at this very moment is so severe Knowing… that last night… Just last night… I was there… belonging… and it rained and we laughed and sang and held hands and chanted against the fucking authority that was busy planing our death.
14- There… it is still burning.
“Dear god, how broke
do you have to be
to not buy people time?”*
15- I stopped praying.
*Andrea Gibson – Orlando
******
Link to the Italian translation
[The title refers to the Khartoum massacre that occurred on 3 June 2019, when armed forces suppressed a peaceful sit-in against the Transitional Military Council that had replaced dictator Omar al-Bashir. Over 100 protesters were killed, with the actual number of victims being very difficult to estimate as several bodies were reportedly thrown in the river Nile.]