Update: (6 pm local Gaza time)

The phone rings once and Asmaa answers. I am beyond relieved, they are safe. They are safe, I think to myself taking in a deep breath of air.

“Hudna…” Asmaa says. Her voice is alive interlaced with the sounds of the outdoors and voices I never heard before. “…I’m sorry I didn’t call you back yesterday, I didn’t get a chance to call back and the lines were already jamming up,” she says reassuring me that she tried.

I know, I tell her. Don’t worry, please don’t apologize. Where are you? I ask as the sounds of life continue to filter in.

“My mother and I are at the market, buying food. We are running low, so we wanted to buy whatever we can now,” she replies.

That’s good, habibti, I reply. I observe that their lovely full of life voices are strong enough to push back the sound of a drone which holds itself somewhere above them. Still, I hear it. Watching. Listening. Recording. I remember the images that Israel released of resistance fighters. I remember the images making them look like shadows, fuzzy outlines, almost like ants. That is how Israel prefers to see us, mere ants ready for extermination. I imagine that resistance fighters shoot the drone out of the sky, a smile comes to my face. Now Asmaa is not in their cross-hairs anymore.

Asmaa continues, “How are you?”

I’m fine habibti, you’ve inspired me to do some shopping myself this afternoon, I say. She answers with a sweet giggle.

“There aren’t any stores open in the Shujaiya,” she says. I superimpose her in an image I saw earlier on TV of a marketplace in Gaza. I imagine her there, one hand on the phone, the other inspecting grapes with her smooth fingertips. “Most of them were destroyed, the other ones are badly damaged,” she says. I hear a man’s voice, “Two shekels, yes, two shekels, I’m very sorry this is the price now. This is all I have to sell, everything else is gone.” He sounds like he is going back and forth with a haggling customer.

The market sounds busy, I say.

“It’s not that busy. There aren’t many people who have returned to the Shujaiya. I think maybe 20%?” she observes.

I think to myself, wow, if she is right that is 20,000 people out of 100,000 and those who returned have had some sort of damage to their homes. DAMAGE in Gaza is relative to their context. The images are telling. Some have returned to piles of rubble and have pitched makeshift tents of blankets tied to pieces of wood. HOME. At least they are HOME. I remember Souad and Asmaa’s words when they went back to whatever was left of their home.

Asmaa starts to say something I can’t make out. All I hear is a VRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMSSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

What is that?! I raise my voice so she can hear me.

“It’s their f16s, they fly over us, really LOW,” she says as I imagine her hand over the phone pushing it further into her ear and nearer her mouth so I can hear her.

Animals, I think to myself. NO, they are monsters. Monsters. I repeat.

“I was saying that we are moving further down and the line is going to fade now and cut off,” Asmaa says.

Tayib, habibti, I say to her. Go ahead, I love you.

“I love you too,” she replies and giggles.

Bye, I say…then in a second there is no more market, no more singing of the voices of strangers. No more f16s or drones, just the thought that there hopefully won’t be any bombs falling on them for the next three days.