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A news report today showed the remnants of a Palestinian family after a day at the beach turned to mayhem when they were reported to have became targets for Israeli gunboats. A twelve-year old girl was filmed as she rushed to the bodies of her father and siblings, screaming and completely overwhelmed by the insane situation she’d just witnessed. Her mother was later interviewed from her hospital
bed where she was being treated for injuries suffered in the attack. With understandable venom, she didn’t grieve as much as curse.
“I want to see Israeli mothers with dead children and husbands,” she said. “Then, I will be happy.”
Listening to the translation of her anguished diatribe, the writer in me stepped up to play this scene out in my head:
Establishing Shot:
Interior Hospital Room / Day
An injured woman is finishing an interview with a TV crew, who EXIT.
ENTER: Woman in Wheelchair
WOMAN IN WHEELCHAIR
I understand you want to see me…
INJURED WOMAN
Do I know you?
WOMAN IN WHEELCHAIR
Perhaps. I lost four children and my husband when a rocket hit our home, and
my spine was shattered in the blast.
Are you happy?
EXIT: Woman in Wheelchair
ENTER: Woman Number Two
WOMAN NUMBER TWO
I understand you want to see me …
INJURED WOMAN
Do I know you?
WOMAN NUMBER TWO
Perhaps. My only child, my precious thirty-five year old daughter, seven months pregnant with twins after
ten years of trying to conceive was blown to bits on a bus in Jerusalem.
Are you happy?
EXIT: Woman Number Two
ENTER: One-eyed Woman
ONE-EYED WOMAN
I understand you want to see me?
INJURED WOMAN
Do I know you?
ONE-EYED WOMAN
Perhaps. My husband, my baby and I were having lunch in a cafe when a suicide bomber
blew herself up near our table. I survived, barely, but wish I hadn’t.
Are you happy?
Cut to: Hospital Corridor …
where a line of women, some disfigured, some crumbling under the weight of depression, some angry, some resigned, some in modern clothing, many in period costumes from the ’30’s and 40’s, stretches to beyond our horizon.
Dissolve to Black
If mothers can’t imagine peace, who ever will?
Well done.
I will imagine peace. Hope for, wish for, PRAY for peace. Who will die for it?