The Small Shrouds of Palestine

TW: Infant loss

I will never forget the first baby I wrapped in a shroud.

It looked like she was sleeping. Her lips were puckered the way they were when she was alive in her hospital crib, in those moments when the pain was well-controlled and she was able to breathe without too much effort. When she was able to be playful. Those moments were rare, but I yearned for them as soon as I entered the ward and walked into her room. I would find her babbling with her little tongue sticking out and drool running down her chin to soak her colorful pajamas. Standing by her crib in the middle of the night, she would look at me with her big eyes and give a hint of a smile. I remember her tiny hands playing with the mobile hanging above her. I still remember the pink socks we put on her hands to stop her from pulling out the tubes attached to her body and how she would rub her nose with it. The same hands that would try to remove the heart shaped stickers on her cheeks that held the tube for oxygen in place. I would walk into the room to find her grandmother cutting new stickers. We would joke about how her hearts were nicer than mine as I held the tube in place and she placed the sticker over it. 

These were small flashes of color in an otherwise dark canvas. Nurses learn to live off crumbs and remind parents and family members to savor those moments of ease when they come.

I remember walking into my night shift and feeling something was wrong. My colleague gently broke the news to me. The baby girl had suddenly taken a turn for the worst and did not have much time left. I stood there frozen as there was a flurry of activity around me. My heart felt heavy as I rushed to her crib and found it empty. She had been moved to a bigger room where she could have privacy with her family in her final moments. When I walked into her new room I found her in her mother’s arms with her whole family standing around them. The doctor was on his knees and had his stethoscope on her tiny unmoving chest. I had never seen her look so comfortable. The doctor whispered something to them while my eyes remained fixed on her puckered lips. I heard their sobs when the doctor came towards me, with tears in his own eyes and whispered what I needed to know.

“Time of death, 19:15.”

Suddenly, the grandmother was hugging me. This strong woman who spent the nights by her bedside with me was shaking in my arms. I blinked away the tears and stroked her back, listening to her cry and asking why it happened so fast. I answered her questions, consoled her as best as I could and let her see the tears I was struggling to hold back. 

Inna Lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji’un.

The words played in my mind as I took her in my arms and put her on the crib. Peace was not enough of a word to describe the feeling of washing the body. I was reminded of the Urdu word sukoon which held more weight. It was sukoon that I felt as I ran the water over her curls and cleaned her shut eyes. This beautiful angel who had been my patient for two months.

When the tears threatened to escape, I reminded myself that she was at ease now. How her last moments with her family were peaceful. I reminded myself of this when I carried her little body and placed her in the arms of her heartbroken parents. When they lifted their eyes and looked into mine, they saw my pain and I saw theirs. Even in the midst of the loss of their entire world, they thanked me before showering their departed child with kisses.

If only every parent were able to see their child leave this broken world with comfort. 

The family left hours later, giving me their baby to take to the morgue of our hospital while they grieved in their home and made preparations for the funeral. My colleague brought the shroud and walked me through how to prepare her body. I remember how I had to hold her hands together to tie her tiny wrists with the white string, how it looked like her palms were open to prayer. I wondered about the pink socks. Did her parents take them away? Would they keep the socks in a box somewhere? I removed all the tubes that no longer served a purpose and took a final look at her face that was missing color but was full of light. I carried her shroud to the morgue with a colleague by my side. There was a heaviness in the hallway that led to the morgue and the air felt thicker. The security guard opened the door, allowing me in and watched me as I stood there in a daze. I understood at that moment why we always needed someone to go down to the morgue with us. It was to guide us back to the ward through the fog of grief. I felt the comforting arm of my colleague around my shoulder as she walked me back to the unit. 

If only every nurse were able to see their patient leave this world in comfort.

I have peacefully placed four babies in shrouds in the span of my career and I remember and mourn each of them. They were not just numbers, four babies that departed from my world. Each of them had a name. They were someone’s everything.

But in Palestine, we are seeing children placed in shrouds by the hundreds without a story, without someone to hold them and without any words of closure or comfort. I know this, because I see it on my screen, nurses placing a child who is covered in soot and wounds on the floor of the hospital as they try to revive them with whatever little resources they have available. There are no socks on the babies hands to stop them from pulling out the tubes because where would the socks go when the hands are no more?. I watch on my phone as every source of comfort is stripped away from the babies of Palestine. I beg the child in the video to blink, knowing in my heart that those eyes may be open but they do not see death and destruction anymore,

If only every child were able to comfortably depart this cruel world.

In my world, we offer a drop of sucrose to babies right before a blood test. A simple little gesture to alleviate the smallest prick of pain. In Palestine, they are performing amputations without anesthesia. 

In my world, the baby is held in the mother’s arms in the last moments. In Palestine, babies remain buried under the rubble a year later. 

In my world, we sing songs to patients and parents pull out Paw Patrol and Blippi videos to distract them while we perform uncomfortable procedures. In Palestine, children are reciting verses of the Quran to comfort themselves because they are known as an acronym that is used all too common to the babies of Palestine – WCRSF (Wounded Child No Surviving Family).

The nurse in me weeps every day for the children of Palestine who never even made it into their shrouds.

The nurse in me breaks every day for the children of Palestine who were brutalized in ways I never imagined I would witness.

The nurse in me rages over the destruction of healthcare in Palestine and all the health care workers slaughtered for not leaving their patients behind.

There is volcanic rage and then there is harrowing grief.

How does the world not stop moving when the blood of children paints our screens red?

The Muslim in me with the Quran in my heart knows that every child I have seen dying on my phone will soon be playing in the gardens of Jannah.

The Muslim in me with faith in Allah knows that with hardship comes ease and that each child who was given the acronym “wounded child no surviving family” will be given comfort in ways I could never imagine possible. 

The Muslim in me knows these children left this world in bloodied shrouds but are dressed in the finest silks as they live out their childhood in Jannah.

وَلَا تَحْسَبَنَّ ٱلَّذِينَ قُتِلُوا۟ فِى سَبِيلِ ٱللَّهِ أَمْوَٰتًۢا ۚ بَلْ أَحْيَآءٌ عِندَ رَبِّهِمْ يُرْزَقُونَ

“Never think of those martyred in the cause of Allah as dead. In fact, they are alive with their Lord, well provided for.” (Quran 3:169) 

The four children I have placed in shrouds and the children I watch being buried on my phone are all my own. The children of Palestine – Sidra, Hind, Reem – and the countless others martyred, are a part of me now. Every child we see in pain should call to the motherly parts of us. Every single beating heart on this planet should be breaking when we see any child in distress.

Why are the shrouds of Palestinian children not given the same weight as the other children in the world?

I ask this question each day as I put a smile on my face and greet my patients, tucking away the grief and rage in order to be present with the children under my care. I wonder how many children my heart can hold before the walls collapse. Before this heart is utterly shattered.  

Maybe my heart’s walls need to break open so that there will be room for every soul placed in small shrouds. I would rather have a heart that is heavy than a heart that is unmoved. I imagine a world where all our heart’s walls collapse to let in this grief, just the way a star collapses in on itself and explodes, leaving behind stardust to create something new. 

Maybe then we will be able to build a world where every child’s shroud carries the same weight.