Where is the rest?

My sister, Entisar, returned home after completing her first year in medical school, and we were all eagerly anticipating her arrival as if she had been born anew that day, much like what anyone does when they fully embrace their dream. I never left her side; perhaps I had stolen that dream, or maybe I had been infected by the beauty of the scene I witnessed—the scene where she abandoned all facets of life for the sake of a single moment, a moment to save a life and to heal a wound that belonged to someone she had never met before.

We sat together, and she recounted everything. What caught my attention was when she mentioned that they had presented real human bodies, covered in formaldehyde, to the medical students in the anatomy lab. However, many students were overtaken by panic. This situation might have been familiar to the instructors, but it was an experience she never grew accustomed to. This is what she described: She convinced her mind to consider these human parts as entities that must be understood in order to remedy any injuries they might sustain. This is how the horrifying scene transformed into a beautiful one with a noble purpose and a bearer of truth.

“I wil be a doctor too!” I declared my intention without much awareness but with enthusiasm. She smiled and said, "Why not?" She began to share many details with me. I followed her closely as she introduced me to the layers of the body (dermis, epidermis, fat, muscle, bone).

This never ending passion engulfed me. I shiver when I imagine myself learning every part of the human body and memorizing it by heart. If only I knew that a dream could come true but in a way that would have an innocent life encountered by a terrifying death!

Amidst airstrikes and destruction, the house that stood proudly a while ago was now a pile of rubble! I opened my eyes to this scene after hearing a voice scream, "Missile!" Then my eyes turned to darkness, and I wish they hadn't returned! Upon waking up, I found myself trapped among the rocks of my room. I didn't even know where I was. I turned around and ran while bleeding from my head and other parts I couldn't identify. Until I found my mother's foot beneath the fallen ceiling. Her foot was torn, and I think I lost my ability to speak here. I ran and found someone hanging in a high place. I think it was the second floor. It's my brother. No, it's his legs. So, where is the rest? I ran again. Here is my sister, Entisar —I recognized her! It's her hair... but where is the rest... of her body? There! Yes! My voice returned, and I screamed without consciousness, with a sound I didn't recognize, layers of the body, yes, here I am seeing it.

This is bone, and here is muscle, but I can't really distingush things There's blood, a lot of blood. I was screaming loudly, and it was impossible to hear what I was screaming at that moment except my voice and its echo amid the rubble and the parts of my sister, Entisar, and my mother's foot, and half of my brother. But where is the rest? I don't know because blood and rubble covered everything, everything.

People I didn't know carried me out, and I had a bag that I found. I placed their body parts in it. I carried what was near my sister, Entisar, in my bag, and they were talking to me while I screamed. I expected they couldn't hear, 'Where is the res... where are they?' I reached the hospital, and they covered the other parts with a white sheet.

When they finished, it was my bag's turn, but I clutched it tightly. Here, I cried, perhaps unknowingly, as my face was covered with many things. I don't know, I don't know, except that when I opened the bag, the blood had disappeared, and I saw everything here. I saw the rest, but it's divided. I saw it, Entisar, I saw the hospital and the doctors, but they were the wounded ones, and I saw dissected bodies, but they were incomplete. Where is the rest?"

Written in Arabic by :  Sarah Al-Ali

Translated to English by :  Tarneem Maitham 

Translated to Kurdish by : Zaid Ali Ahmed

Poster Design by: Zainab Barazan