A sniper ends Sarah’s life a year after killing her husband in Al-Yarmouk

By

Qosai Amamh

Alaa and Sarah’s death would have been so normal, and why would it be new to die in a camp under siege? But their love story, which simulates our childhood love stories, made their martyrdom a story worth being written or filmed. No need for an author’s imagination to decorate death in the name of love, or decorate love in the name of death……

….All it takes today is to tell you the story of a sniper’s shot that killed them from a distance which also determined that of two different graves.

Death is good at being fed with our blood, it doesn’t even recognize the value of what it leaves behind. It teaches us that it’s not bad itself, but the way it takes the souls of a hungry, good or lost man is the worst of all. It makes death above possibility, above our thoughts and patience, and above our ability to accept it again and again.

The sniper here had written the story, and as a criminal, he’ll leave his signature which is bad enough to define him. Meanwhile, no one who heard the story of Alaa and Sarah will ever forget it. The Palestinian girl who loved a Palestinian young man from the Al-Yarmouk Camp, despite her being far from the walls of the great prison; a love story that people talk about. They say it was as long as the distance between a Palestinian and his Jerusalem, and as strong as the relationship between a Palestinian and his dream.

Since human beings invented the weapons and gave them to furious men, a sniper became the controller of the district. This guy, whom we don’t know anything about but his bullets, determines for us the times to eat, pray and sleep early. He also determines the times to suspend a dream and continue it, moments of quietness, volume of fear, velocity of walking, which leg to lose in the next day and which mother would cry more tonight?

Alaa and Sarah had married ‘online’. They signed their marriage contract on the internet after Alaa had been under siege in Al-Yarmouk, a marriage trying its best to be real. It’s legitimate yes, but it’s like a ticket for a dream unreachable for two young lovers in the war .. a marriage which couldn’t last for long and went away from Sarah to leave her such a widowed woman; at least she felt that when Alaa got shot with a sniper’s bullet in Al-Yarmouk.

From Bulgaria to the camp, Sarah went on an opposite journey to what Palestinians go on these days, running away to countries that don’t know hunger, death nor snipers. She came to the camp where Alaa’s grave exists. Heading from Beit Sahem’s military checkpoint, Sarah entered the camp at a time of siege just to stay beside the one she loved, beside his grave and traces.

So far, there’s no story worth being told about the camp, even dying of hunger is no more a novel to narrate and be published, but if so, you wouldn’t find a patient reader to read. Patience went away from the sniper as well, he got bored on his own there, watching roads, people and faces. Without too much thinking, he longed to see the bullet’s casing leaving his weapon.

Sarah was hungry, just like all of the people left there under siege. She went to have a nutritional aid box in the camp. A little more after, just a little, the sniper wasn’t bored anymore as he felt himself reviving again, as he killed again ..

Sarah is now there where Alaa became, in a better place where no hunger, no siege, no jaundice, no aid boxes nor shelling is there.

Sarah Odeh “19 March 2015” shot by a sniper, Alaa Jumaa “23 January 2014” shot by a sniper too.

Qosai Amamh

Is currently Director General of Bina Radio in Syria, having worked as a broadcaster and freelance journalist previously in Damascus.