Birthday in a Cellar
By Amer Al-Massri
Translated by Alaa Alqaisi
The missile struck the two-story house in Khuza’a and reduced it to a heap of memories and blood. Conflicting reports began to circulate: some radio stations confirmed that everyone inside the house had died, including Abdullah and Shamsa. Others reported that the family hadn’t been home at the time of the strike. The neighbors, too, were divided. Some swore they had seen the family leaving just minutes before the explosion; others upheld the first version, insisting that none had survived. But the question lingered for a full week: Where were the bodies of Shamsa, who was paraplegic, and her husband Abdullah?
Search teams managed to recover the remains of Salah, his children Hazem and Na‘mah, and his wife Fatima, from beneath the rubble, and from the surrounding hills and orchards. Yet Abdullah and Shamsa’s bodies remained hidden, submerged somewhere no one could reach. Despite the differing stories—on the airwaves, in the streets, among the neighbors—everyone agreed on one thing: They had seen Salah walk into the house just an hour before the missile wiped the memory of it clean, holding a birthday cake and a bottle of Coca-Cola.
*
A month before the house became a sleeping ghost, the family lived with the peace of a bird in its nest. The sky seemed to pour down upon Abdullah, Shamsa, their son Salah, his wife Fatima, and their grandson Hazem a quiet certainty that perhaps life was still worth living. Any passerby could hear Abu Salah’s TV. Sometimes it played religious chants and sometimes Aleppine ballads, but more often the voice of Umm Kulthum or the cheers of Al-Ahly football matches.
Had someone risked a harmless glance through the street-facing window, they would have seen the family huddled around the TV like a bouquet of flowers offered to a young woman. Abu Salah sat in the center of the couch, his only son on his right, his wife on his left, and directly in front of him, Hazem, clutching a toy made of blocks. At mealtimes, they gathered around a table rich with delicacies at the month’s beginning, and more modest offerings near its end. One might hear the jokes Abu Salah told his grandson, whom he took along on every errand, important or not. He told them to make Hazem laugh, and even though the jokes were often repeated, Hazem, with the cleverness of a ten-year-old, would always catch them, laughing either out of love or in gentle pity for his grandfather’s weary hopes.
Mindful of the old man’s wavering step, befitting someone nearing seventy-five, Hazem would accompany him to a sandy hill near the border. There, his grandfather would sit for long minutes, his face slowly changing, like a lamb staring at its knife . . . or at its feed. Had Hazem been older, more acquainted with life’s sorrows, he might have heard the cry of a child trapped in his grandfather’s chest. Abdullah would fall silent, gazing at his land just five kilometers away, then a spring of memory would surge from his lips. He would speak of the mud-brick house, the two hundred dunums of earth, the vegetable patch, the well to the north, and the evening gatherings around the sound of the rababa, which he hadn’t played in years. The memories seemed endless, more than any lifetime could hold.
He always ended his stories with the same familiar line: “I was your size once, my boy.” But the last time, with Hazem approaching eleven, he changed to say: “I was a year younger than you are now.”
*
Two weeks before Na‘mah flew to the neighboring orchard, Salah woke at exactly seven. He swatted away his dreams with both hands, and they fled. He rose from bed and headed to the bathroom, his face flushed, his left cheek marked by the pillow. His wide eyes had narrowed into slits, barely the width of a needle’s eye. He walked to the kitchen and brewed two cups of coffee. Minutes later, Fatima had gotten out of bed and was sitting on a chair in the living room. Noticing the toll the pregnancy was taking on her, Salah joked: “I know you’re secretly a man. Come on, pull yourself together.” She laughed, nudged him with a hand, then said, her voice slowed by the fatigue of carrying a new life: “If you were the pregnant one, you’d know men aren’t built to handle this.”
“That’s not true,” he replied. “Men can endure worse.”
“Nothing’s harder than pregnancy and childbirth,” she said. “But how else would the jailer be convinced of his power—unless he’s spent years in solitary confinement?”
Salah laughed. “Fine. Next time, I’ll carry the baby for you. Just to see how it feels.”
A smile spread across her face, features swollen from pregnancy. Even the joy in her smile, once perfectly matched to the way her hair fell across her shoulders, had changed. “Anyway,” she said, “why did you make me a coffee when you know I’m not going to drink it? You’ve been doing this every day for years. Aren’t you tired of it?”
“I don’t get tired,” he said. “What matters is that I feel you’re here. That second cup makes me feel your presence. It’s a kind of proof.”
“I feel bad wasting it every day.”
“Just throw it out. What matters is I’m not drinking alone. And once you’ve delivered and gotten your strength back, I won’t let you make a single cup. We’ll keep our pact.”
“The due date’s close now. Today’s the start of my ninth month. Looks like Na‘mah will be born in the same month as Hazem. Who knows… maybe even on the same day.”
“God willing, you’ll deliver safely. Wait, when’s Hazem’s birthday again?”
“Mid-month… exactly fifteen days from now.”
“Perfect. I’m getting paid today. Remind me when the salary comes in, so I can plan something for his birthday.”
“Insha’Allah,” Fatima replied.
Salah then rose from his chair and headed off to the Water Authority.
*
One week before Hazem’s head fell upon his grandfather’s hill, Shamsa said haltingly: “I-I w-want to… to sit… o-out in the c-c-courtyard.”
She insisted, with her fractured voice, on being wheeled outside. So Abdullah called out to Salah, asking him to push his mother’s wheelchair out into the yard.
Within minutes, there were two suns in the courtyard:
One in the sky. One in a chair.
Shamsa looked over the courtyard and was flooded with memories of Hebron, its squares, its streets. She saw a little girl walking with her mother to the Ibrahimi Mosque at the end of the week. She saw the girl again, running through their home garden, picking oranges from her father’s trees. She saw the clay oven beside which she had learned what it meant to be a woman. Then she watched the girl grow, until she turned eighteen,. Then she saw Abdullah standing at the door: her first and last suitor. The first time she saw him, she fled inside like a startled gazelle, cheeks flushed. She glanced at herself in the mirror, and there stood a woman, a marriage nearly sealed. Had Abdullah been listening closely, he might have heard her soft gasp, clearly escaping in that moment, as she remembered her brother’s joy at seeing his sister marry his closest friend, the one who he’d worked beside for years inside “the Green Line.”
She saw, too, her mother-in-law’s delight when her eldest son married, celebrations spilling into the camp’s narrow alleys, before they moved to Khuza‘a, seeking escape from the noise and overcrowding. A half-smile appeared on Shamsa’s face, its other half lost to the stroke that had paralyzed it.
The wedding scene returned in vivid detail, along with the neighbor’s remark: “It’s the first time I’ve seen two weddings for the same bride!” She had, indeed, been forced into two weddings: One in Hebron, and another in the alleys of Khan Younis refugee camp, because it was impossible for the entire family to attend a single celebration.
Abdullah didn’t notice the tears sliding down her wrinkled face. She always cried when she looked out at the courtyard, breathing in the air that, at times, smelled faintly of Hebron, a city not even thirty minutes away by car, yet separated by decades of exile. She had once refused a travel permit, because her second son had been martyred in the 2008 war, killed when fighter jets bombed the police stations.
Then Hazem—her grandson—leapt before her, playing. And she saw, for a fleeting second, the possibility of shortening the distance.
*
The day before the massacre, Salah sat in front of the television, listening to the tension pouring out of its speakers. He wondered what would happen to them if the war came, as the news was predicting. Maybe he thought about returning to his grandfather’s small house in the refugee camp, but he dismissed the idea, since his three uncles were all still living there, unable to build homes of their own.
He muttered in quiet blame: “God forgive you, Abu Salah. Of all places, you chose to live right on the border!”
Then immediately, he blamed himself instead. He remembered how the horror of the Israeli occupation made one turn on the victim and forget the killer. His thoughts turned to the cellar beneath the house. He told himself it might be a good shelter if the bombing started. He decided to speak to his parents, then got up and said:
“I’m going to move Mom down to the cellar. Things are tense, and war might break out. There could be a ground invasion. It’s better to take her down now.”
At first, Abu Salah objected. But then he held back, leaned on his own powerlessness, and agreed.
“And your wife and the kids?” he asked.
“I’ll get them down quickly if anything happens, God forbid.”
“Let’s hope for the best, insha’Allah.”
Salah carried his mother downstairs after tidying up the room and wiping away the dust.
His father followed. He had already prepared a room in the lower part of the house, one that only the family knew about. He had always believed it would be their best chance of survival in the event of an invasion. The family had hidden there during every previous war and military escalation.
Salah added: “Tomorrow’s Hazem’s birthday. We’ll celebrate it in the cellar. But Fatima might not be able to come down the stairs, since she’s still recovering.”
“May God help her,” his father replied. “Her delivery was hard. Thank God she made it through safely.”
“God bless you, Yaba.”
Then Salah kissed his mother’s hand, asked for leave, and returned quietly to his TV.
*
On the day the family became the subject of every radio broadcast, Salah drifted into sleep. Though the air was heavy with tension, the bombing had stayed away from the house, so he decided to postpone moving to the cellar until evening. He woke up in the afternoon, prepared the usual two cups of coffee, and then headed out to the sweet shop he always went to—Dabbaan. He took a car to Khan Younis city center, right in the middle of Jalal Street. From there, he picked up a bottle of Coca-Cola from a nearby shop.
Less than half an hour later, the neighbors saw him walking through the front door, carrying a large birthday cake and the bottle of Coke in both hands.
*
Abu Salah woke to a violent blow to the head. He found himself and his wife crushed into a five-square-meter space. He had no idea what had happened until he heard her groaning beside him, somewhere close but unreachable in the dark. He looked left and right, but there was nothing but pitch black. He tried to stand and failed twice. On the third attempt, crawling and fumbling, he finally reached her. He tried to help her sit in her wheelchair, but couldn’t. They both collapsed onto the dusty floor, covered in debris and shards of glass.
He needed to deny what was happening. He had nearly convinced himself it was a bad dream when the sound of ambulances above erased all doubt. Still, he refused the truth. He grabbed his cane and struck the wall. Then struck again. The cane snapped in two. He only stopped when he saw blood pouring from his forehead. He curled into a corner of the room, trembling, listening to his wife’s quiet sobs.
Half an hour passed. Finally, Shamsa managed to utter a single word: “Salah…” And Abdullah broke. He wept the way the powerless weep. Then, all at once, the words erupted from his mouth: “Enough, Shamsa! Salah is dead. His children are dead. Even Na‘mah, she didn’t live ten days. She’s dead!” He crawled over to Shamsa and took her hands in his. “Don’t say it. Don’t say they’re gone. This is the first time I’ve ever wished you would stay silent.”
He looked upward and screamed: “People! We’re here! Down below! Dig us out! I want to see my family one last time…”
He turned back to Shamsa, gripped her hands again, and screamed louder: “Why did they die? Why didn’t God let me rejoice with them for just one more day? Why did He create us, Shamsa, just to die a thousand times while still alive? I’ve died a thousand times, and I haven’t even died yet!”
His eyes brimmed again. Blood slid down from his forehead, mixing with tears and sobs. Then he went on, in a voice ragged with decades: “Sixty-six years ago, I was forced from my village before I was even ten. I said: It’s God’s will. Then I lived half my life in a tent, and I said: It’s God’s will. I was patient. Later, He blessed me with money. And with you. I thanked Him. Then came the uprising, and I lost my job. The world shrank again. I said: God gives as He pleases. Then Jihad was martyred, and I felt my heart split in two. You were paralyzed from grief before you even turned fifty. Still, I was patient. I never protested. But now I protest. Why, Shamsa? Why Salah, his wife, their children? Why did God take the only ones we had left?”
Shamsa had become a statue of grief. She didn’t move. Even her tears refused to fall. She had joined the dead, and the final piece of her heart had broken.
The sound of ambulances above grew louder.
Abdullah looked upward again and cried: “Let me see them one last time, O God. Just once more.” No one heard him. Soon after, quiet fell upon the wreckage. No more sirens. No more voices. No more motion.
*
Three days into the silence of the pit where Abdullah and his wife were trapped, the birthday cake was still intact, ready to be eaten. Unable to endure the hunger any longer, or the quiet defiance of doing nothing, Abdullah began crawling through the cellar, searching for Hazem’s cake. It was a slow, painful search through the dark, but finally, he found it: the cake, and the bottle of Coca-Cola beside it.
When Abdullah picked up the bottle, his hands trembled. He was afraid to open it. It sat in his grasp for nearly half an hour, cold and unopened, as though holding it might bring time back. But a little while later, he found himself feeding Shamsa a piece of cake, then lifting the bottle gently to her lips. She drank. When it was his turn, he took a small sip of the soda, but didn’t eat.
He turned toward the place where the cake sat, feeling for it with his fingers in the dark. And then, with a cracked voice and broken breaths, he began to sing:
“Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, Hazem. Happy birthday, my sweet boy.”
*
A week after the catastrophe, Abu Salah sat in a small room in Khan Younis refugee camp. In front of him were two full cups of coffee. Across from him sat his wife, now a statue in every sense. The television was on. A reporter was telling the story of a small boy who had been playing atop the ruins of a bombed house. By chance, the boy had helped rescue two survivors. The rest of the family had been killed.
“Birthday in a Cellar” appears in Amer Al-Masry’s third short-story collection, The Man Who Turned Back (الرجل الذي التفت إلى الوراء), the first book out from the new Gaza Publications.
You can support Al-Masry and the publishing house by ordering a copy of the book.
Amer Al-Masry is a Palestinian novelist and short-story writer from Khan Yunis. He has published two previous short story collections, ” ثلاثة يحاصرونني” in 2018 and ” حافر القبر القادم” in 2019. He also published a novel in 2019, ” ممحاة سيدي أزرق.” You can find him on Instagram at @amer_almassri and get a copy of his short-story collection,
Alaa Alqaisi is a Palestinian translator, writer, and researcher from Gaza, deeply passionate about literature, language, and the power of storytelling to bridge cultures and bear witness to lived realities.