Update: After the so-called 72 hour “cease-fire” begins I call to see what my family will be doing.

The phone rings only a few times and finally I get through, after several calls.

Souad answers, “Alo.” The usual sound of children playing and voices deep in conversation are absent. There is an echo where she is and the line has a static which fades in and out. I am afraid, it sounds like the reception is crossing with those ungodly steel monsters hovering above them. Clink. Clank. Sfish. Strange sounds, I haven’t heard before.

I feel like I haven’t heard your voice in a while, I tell her.

“Me too,” she replies. Her voice is not the same. It is a loooooong hollow plane.

Is something wrong? I ask. As if nothing could be wrong, I again feel ashamed at my questions and choice of words, again.

“We are HOME,” she says. Then I realize and focus on the background, they are cleaning. I hear cleaning in the background.

In the Shujaiya? I ask. My body becomes rigid and I clear my throat.

“Yes, we are HOME,” she says. It sounds like she is holding back her emotions and tears, like a dam with cracks.

The cease-fire is a lie, I tell her. They didn’t stop, you know that, don’t you? I ask.

“Yes, I know. They hit Rafah and killed MANY,” the cracks are creasing further down her body. I can hear it in her voice.

Some of the fighting is east of the Shujaiya. THEY will continue to hit the area, there is NO cease-fire, Israel will not stop. If anyone knows, YOU know. What if you are caught there? I am angry, sad and confused. My fear of harm to them seizes me.

“You are right,” she whispers. “We’ve been away from HOME for 13 days,” her voice is now frustrated. I still here the clink, clank and sfish. Voices fade in and out. I imagine them moving from room to room.

Then I hear the tears, they’ve breached her body without a sound. The cracks have given way. I tear up. I feel angry.

“We will see, we will see, THREE days, just three days and we will see if there is danger we will leave. We are thrown everywhere, this is OUR HOME,” her voice fades. The phone seems to be suspended in air. Clink. Clank. Sfish.

“We are no different than anyone else living in Gaza,” she whispers very softly.

I remember the images of Palestinians going to their HOMES during the first cease-fire. The pain of losing HOME was captured by photos that have circulated as hundreds of thousands scrambled to see what became of their homes.The images come back to me, Palestinians crying, screaming, grasping their hair or heads.

Hello? I ask, she has stopped talking. I imagine her face, her body crouched down as the reality of what is left of her home is seen for the first time with her own eyes, this time. All the accounts she heard from her sons and fellow neighbors in the Shujaiya were painful enough, but now it’s different. DAMAR. The word from our previous conversation haunts me. DESTRUCTION.

Clink. Clank. Sfish.

(I am interrupted as I type up our conversation NOW 1pm Gaza time, I get word that the cease-fire has officially been called off by Israel. My heart falls to the ground, they are in a dangerous area and I have to let them know to get out. I call no answer. For the next several hours, I can’t get through. I have to finish typing.)

“Alo,” Asmaa is suddenly on the line now. Her mother passed her the phone without another word to me. I imagine that she is staring at the photo they hung of her husband, the father of ten on a wall after he died in December of 2013. He didn’t die in this war, but another one. Israel’s other weapon, the suffocating crime of SIEGE. He died on the operating table in Gaza. Without the proper medical care and supplies, that month alone, I recall us discussing….over 40 people died in surgeries. Surgeries that in the US or any other place on on earth, would be routine. I wonder if she is looking up at him or if his picture was also a victim of the missiles that hit their HOME.

Where is your mother? I ask with a knot in my throat.

“She’s here,” her voice is stiff. I know she is hiding her mother’s pain because they never want to “upset” me.

She’s crying, isn’t she? I ask. My heart is sinking.

“Mmmm,” she replies quietly. I hear her move, leaving the clink, clank sfish somewhere in the distance. “My mother is not doing well, she can’t take it anymore.”

I hear nothing anymore, just the sounds of sadness and anger and Asmaa’s breath as it encompasses her mother’s pain, moving past her home, her neighborhood, her family and embracing all of Gaza.