Mothers on the  pier: a  lament 

They sit on the pier, motionless, their eyes fixed on a distant point, unable to remember the precise moment when it happened. They do not eat or drink. They do not speak. They simply exist, as if they were dirt or stones.

Dozens of women gather on the dock—thirty, perhaps forty, maybe fifty. They wear ragged clothes, worn  thin by use, faded by the ceaseless sun. Bent forward, they resemble strange oddities, out of place with the rhythm of the  port. Waves come and go. Fishermen mend their nets. Boats approach the wharf, unload, and depart. Boxes of provisions pile up in makeshift shelters. Time progresses—but not for them.

 It is early February, but it feels like spring: the sun is bright, the breeze is light, and the almond trees in the backyards are in full bloom. When daylight fades, the women remain still and composed. But as soon as the sun sinks far out at sea, and shadows stretch long and pale, they awaken from their torpor, rising from inertia and opening their squinty eyes. They stare at the shapeless bundles in their arms, swaying their bodies first to the left, then to the right, searching for  a  meaning, asking for a cause. But soon they realize the quest is futile, the loss is final. And, in the moment they become aware of the inevitable, they all start crying.

They sob loudly, their groans roaring. They scream with an intensity far beyond the strength of their frail bodies. They desperately shuffle the bundles in their arms, gently shaking them as if to awake them from an unwelcome sleep. But nothing moves. Nothing stirs.

Desperation builds. Their shrieks turn thunderous. Instinctively, they press the tiny bodies to their chests, trying to give warmth, to offer comfort. They howl and weep in despair, unable to quiet their grieving minds. Because the children they hold are motionless, lifeless.

A motorized patrol passes by, the headlights illuminating the wailing wall of women on the pier. It stops amid clouds of debris, of piles of rubble. A few soldiers disembark—precision rifles on their shoulders, machine guns in hand. They approach the women, shouting foul expressions, harsh orders, crude commands. They want to end the noise. To silence the cries. The screaming grates on their ears; the commotion disturbs them. Yet there is no one around, no one the women could possibly disturb.

Still, the soldiers persist. But the women do not yield. They grumble. They whimper. They shout at the top of their lungs. The more impatient the soldiers become, the more the women unleash their anguish. They are frantic, desperate, because the infants in their arms are gone.

A soldier steps closer to the assembly, cursing his bad luck and the gods of war. Torch in hand, he scrutinizes the women, moving his beam up and down. First across the front row, then one by one, through the rest. Perhaps he wants to count how many they are. He wants to check their age. He wants to assess if any are attractive, though in the dark, it is hard to tell. The wharf is raucous. Loud. Ear-splitting.

More soldiers arrive. Now it is a full squad of irritated young men, all armed, rifles  in their hands, helmets tight on their heads, soft body armor strapped to their chests. Smirks twitch at the corners of their uneasy mouths. And then, without warning, the mothers suddenly fall silent—mid-sob, mid-scream, mid-groan.

It has been six days since the weeping began, repeating each day, almost identically, at nearly the same time. Nearly a week has passed since the shells struck the school. Six days since madness dropped death and destruction on innocent children, leaving the survivors to wonder why. Six days since nearly one hundred kindergarteners perished. For five days now, the soldiers have come to stop the women, to silence the uproar, to restore  the order. But the women refuse to obey. And why should they?

They resist. They struggle. They cling to the small bodies with every ounce of strength their arms still have. A mother never lets her child go. A mother is a harbor, a cushion, a haven. To give up their children would be a sin. 

All mothers understant. All feel and think with the same soul. These women are frail. They are wrinkled, worn—but not broken. They carry the force of lions, the determination of bulls, the endurance of elephants. They want to keep their children.

The soldiers have killed their young sons and daughters. They have murdered other children, somewhere else. Among the combatants’ own ranks are the older sons and daughters of these same mothers. And across the battlefield, behind the barricades, are the children of other mothers—just like them.

Does it matter if there is a wall between them? Does it matter who is labeled good or bad? Who belongs to the winning side, or the losing one? The mothers of the enemy also weep and wail. They also ache with a pain that has no cure. They, too, feel robbed, betrayed, abandoned.

Why can’t the soldiers understand?
Why do the commanding officers look away?
Why are the leaders so brutally blind, so cruelly deaf?

The soldiers pull and push. They fight and brawl, but the women do not yield. They swear and sweat, grow angry, flustered. They hate this task, and even more so when the mothers are as unyielding as these. Their threats, their uniforms, their mighty firepower make no difference. They realize their efforts are futile. Their struggle is in vain.

They are surprised. Confused. Befuddled. They consider using their rifles to bring the madness to an end. But after a brief scuffle, they give up. They turn back and return to their vehicle. They say nothing as they climb aboard—failure sits heavy in their chests. They leave the pier trailing behind them a cloud of bitterness, unresolved questions, an unfinished job.

Silence returns, if only for a moment. It is the brief pause in which the women lift their eyes to the sky above and stare into the deep expanse of the sea. Then, one mother speaks. She murmurs the same sorrowful, disconsolate words. The others hear, and they know: it is time to begin again. They had only been waiting for a signal to release once more their grief into the air.

But now the chorus is stronger. There are more voices, more tones—no longer just the fifty mothers on the pier. New cries rise up—some deep, some high and sharp. A powerful echo swells in the air, and a kind of halo settles over the land. Even the weary sentinels in the watchtower, on duty since sunrise, hear the renewed sobbing and recognize the change. 

More women are crying now. More mothers are weeping—for lost babies, for children who will never return, for teenagers who are now memories. For all those the war has taken away.

It is a chorus now, biblical in its depth, unified in its pain. The sound rises from the north and the south, from the land and the sea, from this country and the next. It equally comes from the  brothers and the enemies. It carries across the ocean, reaching lands where bombs do not fall, where wars are distant recalls, and children do not die like this. It is all the mothers of this barren, desolate, and broken land—sobbing, shedding tears soaked in sorrow.

It is because mothers know what it means to lose a child.
Mothers understand how to forgive—but never forget.  Mothers are mothers.
And that is more than enough.

The soldiers cannot silence them, cannot take their children away.  That makes them uneasy and irritable. The mothers unsettle them, on both sides of the wall, in all the trenches they wait, in all the barracks they sleep.

They think of their own mothers, and their hearts are pierced. They think of their mothers, and their minds refuse to obey. In frustration, they fire their rifles into the air. They swing their searchlights to illuminate a vague enemy, to put a border around a blurry foe, one they cannot see and shoot. A threat no bullet can stop. The soldiers are powerless when mothers unite. Some of them wonder:

How many times has the son of a head of state fought in a war?
How many times has a ruler’s child died on a battlefield?
How often have those in power paused to ask how it feels when the body of a beloved kid is returned in a box?

How often do they stop to consider whether destruction is justified, agony is defensible, pain is trivial, death is warranted, war is just?

The soldiers return to the pier. This time there are hundreds, maybe two hundred. They come to crush the resistance, to take the children from the mothers, once and for all. They plan to place them in crude boxes, stuff them into makeshift coffins, bury them in shallow graves, far from the mothers, far from the eyes that might measure the desolation those tiny mounds exhale.

But the mothers know. They know that if they comply, if they surrender their children, they will lose them forever. So, they hold on tighter. They summon the strength within to resist the beatings, the thrashings, the brutality that is sure to come. But the pain — whatever it may be  —cannot compare to the sorrow they feel.

The soldiers are restless and irritated. They form two crooked rows and march toward the pier. But when they arrive, they find no one. The streets are empty. The doors hang open, but the houses are abandoned. The pier is silent. The mothers and their children are gone.  

The soldiers are worried. They know punishment is coming. They will be disciplined and left to sweat in the heat of ditches, locked in windowless cells, confined to foul stalls. They failed a simple task. Failure is a serious offense among their kind. They will be sentenced, taught again what military obedience means, that an order is an order, no matter how brazen, how shameless, how wrong it is.

But they  think it is not their fault.

They were ready to obey. Ready to bury the children and restore the law their commanders want. But when they arrived, there was no one left to seize. No one to arrest. No one to blame.

Only silence. Only darkness. Only gloom.

The mothers  vanished. They were gone—not just from this side of the wall, but also from the other. They sailed away with their children, far from this forsaken land. They ascended with purpose, to became untouchable, eternal. They shine in the night sky. Bright stars, guiding the travelers. Beacons for the lost. Luminous reminders for those still grappling, wrestling on this wounded earth they dreamed of a different world.

Without suffering.

Without killing.

Without wars.