‘Reaching Heba in My Dreams’

It was October 20, 2023 when poet, novelist, and educator Heba Abu Nada was killed by an Israeli airstrike. She was 32. Here, her sister Somaia strings together time, place, and memory.

Reaching Heba in My Dreams

By Somaia Abunada

Where Does the Soul Go After Death?

One day, I was speaking with a friend about how this world works, what a soul is, and how vast the universe might be. We shared our perspectives on the afterlife and on who we are in this life. Mine rests on the faith I was raised with: that in the afterlife, souls who have done good meet again in heaven.

His was different. He believed we are only vessels, that the brain produces senses and feelings; that we are machines wired together, and, when we die, the machine stops and everything ends.

The War and the Breaking of Humanity

The war was cruel beyond any speech. For those who did not live it, it is impossible to understand what actually happens, how close death feels. You reach the edge of every emotion: fear, hunger, exhaustion, sorrow, and a kind of madness.

Everything drains your ability to think or to manage even simple logic. The body switches to survival. It becomes an empty vessel, moving automatically to find food and water, to hide from relentless bombing.

In these moments, you are stripped of humanity, dignity, happiness, even of time. Each moment is heavier than the one before it. Every second in a war zone pulls at your strength and hollows the soul.

Amid the oppressive darkness of day and night, what remains of you builds another world inside the mind, shored by dreams. Some are old memories of how life once was; others are fragments of the life you ache to live, the hunger to feel alive again, to fall in love, to be safe, to be happy, to sit with your whole family around a table full of food, to taste freedom.

Questions keep circling: “Why does another human being, made of the same flesh and bone, have the right to take your life because they hold a different belief, a different faith, a different passport? Why is this happening?

“What is life? How long do they think they can live? In a hundred years, this will be history, and most of us, both them and us, will be gone. Is this how the world works? Is this the circle of life, that people are born and, in certain times, some take the lives of others? Why?”

The Moment I Lost Heba

The war on Gaza began in the blink of an eye. Scenes from my life flashed before me, but when I lost my sister, time stopped.

We were sitting in the so-called “safe zone” at my aunt’s house. My heart was about to burst from fear after so much bloodshed. My mind couldn’t process the horror. Every inch of me trembled, but she was there.

Heba, the warm light that calms the soul. She held my hand, smiling, telling me that everything would be okay. She was soft as a feather; my thoughts came to rest on her shoulder.

Before the building next door was targeted, Heba was no longer right beside me. Her presence felt light, like a fading halo. Then the bombing came. The house collapsed on our heads. I felt nothing, not even the thing I had feared most. My brain switched to survival. I could no longer think or feel.

What Are Dreams?

How many worlds can the mind create to escape reality?

In my dreams, I stored all the emotions I yearned to feel, in different universes. I have always escaped through sleep, detaching to reach those places where the feelings I longed for were familiar.

When I lost Heba, my brain tried to protect me by shutting everything down. It could not hold that weight.

I don’t know why we are so deeply tied to our dreams. Maybe they are a last attempt to refuse reality. I keep dreaming of Heba. She spends time with me: we go shopping, we have small talks, we laugh. She is always happy that we have finally met again after a long time.

My Multiverses’ Visions of Her

On the 20th of October, early on that doomed day, the day Heba lay in the mortuary fridge, I tried hard to sleep. My heart ached.

We were sitting on the hospital floor after being displaced and bombed. We were still in shock. Burying Heba was one of the hardest tasks of the war. We had so many questions: Where can we bury her? How can we move her body with bombings everywhere? Would there be a place for her? None of her friends could say goodbye.

On that morning, I closed my eyes, holding all these questions, unable to process that they had taken the place of grief. I fell half-asleep and saw Heba. She was leaving this earth, smiling as if released from all the pain she had held. She looked at me, then rose into the sky.

I woke. My mother asked, “Have you seen her? Has anyone seen her?”

I nodded. “Yes, Mom. Heba flew away. She was happy.”

My mother sighed, “Alhamdulillah. Now she can be with her uncle and grandfather in heaven.”

Dreams of Survival and Helplessness

The days that followed were brutal. We were displaced, running to secure food and water. My brain stayed in survival mode; there was no room to think or grieve. Each night I tried to sleep, hoping to see her again, but I couldn’t. I hadn’t said goodbye.

At first, Heba visited me. She was calm and happy. But I would scream, “WHY DID YOU LEAVE ME?!”

I cried my heart out in those dreams, looking at her, knowing she was no longer here. She only smiled at me like an angel.

Weeks passed. Every night I waited for her. Then the dreams changed: Heba appeared alive but very sick. In each dream, I tried to save her, to find treatment, and every time I failed. I woke, my heart in pain for failing to rescue her. Each night, she died again in a different way.

As the war dragged on, I missed her even more. I longed for her reassurance, for the words that everything would be okay. Death surrounded my family. Nothing breaks you like the helplessness of being unable to protect the ones you love.

Dreams That Guided Me

There was no silver lining, no sign the war would end. I began to think of leaving Gaza,but how? How could I take my family? Heba was the eldest. In my dreams, I reached for her, asking what to do, how to rescue our family.

Those dreams became conversations. I can’t remember the words, but I remember speaking with her. The moments soothed me like cool rain in a burning summer.

“I don’t want to wake up,” I thought. “I want to stay and talk to her.”

Those dreams were the only reality, not the hell we lived in.

Outside Gaza, Scattered Between Two Worlds

After I left Gaza, the war continued. My family remained. I still could not grieve. Life outside moved on, normal conversations, normal routines, but I was torn. My body was outside Gaza; my mind and heart were still inside.

During that period, my dreams changed again. Heba would visit me, take me shopping, buy clothes and shoes. It felt as if she were preparing me to live a normal life again. She hugged me more, talked to me more, as though telling me: try to live.

But I kept waking up, leaving her again and again and again.

I miss her. I miss her so much. I want to cry every second. What does life mean without her?

Not Being Able to See Her Grave

Heba was buried at the beginning of the war. I don’t even know where. I couldn’t visit her grave or lay flowers. I still need to weep until my eyes are dry.

I cling to my dreams. I want to escape reality and keep talking with her there. Heba was the meaning of life for me. I don’t know what life means without her.

It has been two years of losing her, I admit that I have never met anyone so extraordinary. In all the parallel universes, I wish to have her as my sister. I believe that in every version of existence, she would be just as perfect as she was.

For now, though, I must face the reality that she is no longer here.

Somaia Abunada is an Arabic Language Lecturer at Trinity College Dublin and a Social Impact Analyst at Rethink Ireland. She holds an MPhil in Intercultural Communication from Trinity College Dublin and a Master’s in Translation Studies from the Islamic University of Gaza. A former Fulbright Language Teaching Assistant in the United States, Somaia has extensive experience in teaching, translation, and intercultural education. She has worked with institutions such as the Irish Red Cross, Fáilte Isteach, and We Are Not Numbers, where she supported refugee communities and youth storytelling initiatives. Her professional background also includes social media coordination, humanitarian communication, and creative writing. Passionate about language, culture, and social justice.