It's taken me a few days to figure out just how to put this, but over the last few weeks, the starlings above my window have started to fledge, and my youngest cat has been learning to hunt. The first night, she brought a little fledgling home my dad was visiting, and even if he encouraged me to set it loose, let nature take course, I couldn't bear the thought of it. I held that little bird in a box and forced my dad to drive the forty minutes to a rescue. A few days after that, when my dad wasn't visiting, my cat brought another one home. This time, she didn't get into the house because the back door was shut, and she hadn't figured out how to jump in the window while holding the bird. My mother and I only knew she was out there because the panicked mother bird was screaming at my cat, unable to save her baby. So I did. I picked up my cat, locked her indoors, pulled on some gloves, and picked up the baby. This one was far more mobile than the first, but unfortunately, it had ended up with a chipped beak. I remember it's blood on my gloves, I still see it on my hands.
Without my dad, we had no car, so we just had to phone the rescue and wait for their ambulance. We waited, waited, and waited. My mother phoned hourly for updates while I sat in with that bird, trying to research everything I might need to know. Soothing it when I had to check for injuries and answer the receptionists' questions. Holding it against my chest to make sure it wouldn't fall. Letting it fall asleep in my hands before gently setting it down in its home made nest. Too afraid to feed it in case I made it sick.
Eventually, we both had to relent and get some sleep, me being dragged up the stairs by my mum. Tossing and turning for hours, waking up at my first alarm and running down the stairs. Not stopping to feed my cat. Instead, just shutting myself in the dark bathroom and worriedly checking on it, only to find a dead baby. A baby that in such a small time I had grown to view as my own. That I sat with, in the dark, holding it's cold, stiff body, sobbing until the sun came up. Until long after my little brother left for school. Eventually, being blinded by the hallway light when my mum came in and held me as I sobbed and helped me dispose of him.
I heard the starlings cry that day.
And I hated myself for not being able to save their baby.
I have not sobbed that way in years, not since I lost my littlest brother.
I have not seen someone sob that way in person since I saw my mother at his funeral.
But I have seen people sob like that since.
Every time I see a Palestinian child, I see myself, mourning my brother.
Every time I see a Palestinian mother, I see my own.
And every time I remember my little bird and feel that horrid ache in my chest, I know I can only imagine a fraction of their pain.
I stand with Palestine. I stand with the parents of Palestine, the siblings of Palestine, the children of Palestine.
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