The Earth dipped beneath the crater and it was all so beautiful that we thought for a moment we were going to be okay.
We lay on our backs in the crater, embroidered moons stitched over our hearts, still wearing our school uniforms because we never made it home.
“Do you think someone will find us, Amira?” Farah asked, her eyes catching on the last glints of blue and white-feathered swirls as the planet we once called home faded out of sight.
“Before earthrise.” I answered, crossing my arms over my chest.
I didn’t want to think about it. Moondust burned my nose and lungs, and I was covered in a thin layer of it. We had taken quite the tumble down here, and I was starting to feel it in my sore muscles and aching back.
Farah is four years younger than me. She didn’t need to know that we were in one of the largest craters on the settled portion of the moon, and that even when mama realizes we’re missing, she won’t know where to look. The only people who will know where to find us are the kids who pushed us in here.
The dome that keeps our oxygen inside glittered over us. We were so small compared to everything: to the moon, to all the adults. To this crater. The moon’s surface oxygenation vacuum allowed for sound to travel. At the moment, we could hear distant voices chanting and shouting, drumbeats embellishing their slogans.
The protest must have been starting. On Earth, it was the full moon, but to us on the moon, it was full sun.
I had been to the protests before; packed bodies, people wearing the white and black kufiyah, dumpster fires spreading so rapidly the government threatened to turn the heavy gravity on. If the moon was a vacuum, and our voices could never carry, then we still would shout. we still would scream until our throats were raw and our tears stung from the gas. We were already so far away from the earth, so far from anything that mattered to us. It didn’t matter if anyone on-world would see the signs we carried or the fires we started. There was fire in our people’s hearts, and it did not need an audience.
“We won’t make it to the protest.” Farah frowned.
“Looks like it.” I sighed.
We had planned on protesting the war down in Gaza after school. Our parents were born and raised there, and had been relocated to the lunar colonies in ’48, with nothing on their backs but their clothes. Nothing in their hands but a single house key, for a home that would shrink so small on the horizon, they knew they’d never come back to it. Farah and I were born here, sector nine, a mix of wealthy settlers and refugees. We’ve never known the feel of Earth, let alone our homeland.
Recently there’s been an influx of Ukrainian and newer Palestinian refugees to our sector. With the recent wars, the UN was cornered into shipping out those who had fled their homes. No other country wanted to take them. No part of the planet did. So, they had to go to the moon.
Farah groaned. She was either in pain or impatient. I thought about ways we could escape. In this gravity, we could only jump about three meters. I remembered physics homework problems, kinematic equations, the curve of the jumper’s trajectory, the downwards tug that was lighter than that on earth, but still present. It was something we couldn’t resist, some omnipresent force that held us down. Gravity was something we would never beat, so we lay still. Not bothering to fight. Not bothering to find our way out.
My father fought in the ‘48 war. He brought bodies back to their families. He walked by those burning in the city square and did not look away. He hid behind a half-open door, his mother plastering her hand over his brother’s mouth. They had thought that cracking the door open would ease suspicion of their presence. And it worked. The rifles turned and the soldiers never saw them. They moved on to extinguish others like them.
I was born into the resignation. It’s not my fault. I was born into natural silence and desolation. I don’t know if I would fight like hell the way my father did, or if I would scream like hell the way my mother does now at the protests, until tears slick her face and she’s sworn her blood and her spirit to some motherland that she hopes still waits for her.
So, Farah and I waited. Waited until someone stumbled upon us on their way back home, green and red of the flags they carry the only colors in this desert of gray. Someone to fight for us. To pull us out of the crater we’ve been forced into.
+
Farah and I had been walking back home from school when the guerilla attempt was made on us. Something blunt at our backs, either fists or books or the gray soles of their shoes. And we couldn’t see much because the light was just starting to recede on this side of the moon. We couldn’t see their faces, but it didn’t matter. I knew it could be any one of them; kids who laughed at the food we brought to lunch period, who called us terrorists for saying we shouldn’t be on the moon, and that we should go back home. Who told us we don’t belong. But on the moon, no type of life belongs. I will never belong anywhere but the smoldered portion of the earth that was once my parents’ home.
They came when the Earth veered out of sight to shout at us about the horrors we had left behind on the blue planet. But we knew all about the horrors: the children fished out of the rubble; the civilians killed. The surveillance drones across the border eying family still living near the stretch of land we had fled long ago.
And I was stuck down here, in a pit some meteorite had left for us.
I tried to shield Farah from the kids, but although I was taller and bigger than her, I was not much stronger. We stumbled, skidding through the powdery dust that did nothing to cushion the fall. By the time we reached the bottom, the kids were gone, and so was the Earth.
+
Farah coughed, and it sounded bad. I lifted myself up and ran my fingers through her hair. Moondust burns when inhaled. It burns our eyes and sometimes minuscule crystalline shards from the regions that used to be volcanic will pierce our skin. It felt like thousands of small creatures latching on with their teeth, putting venom through skin.
“It’s going to be okay.” I soothed. Even I did not believe the words I told her.
She turned her face to me, and I saw the ash-painted flicker of her eyelids, her cheeks smeared gray, and suddenly I was staring into the television screen. They’ve just fished another child from the liquified ruins of an apartment complex. They’ve just found a little girl in the rocketfire ash. They’ve just found a baby boy, shellshocked at four years old, and he will never understand what happened to him, how deep the crater is where his house once was.
I hugged them, leaning in to wrap my arms around Farah. She coughed some more, this time into the junction between my shoulder and neck, and we didn’t let go for some time.
“It’s going to be okay.” I repeated.
The distant drumbeat from the rally neared. I imagined I could feel the heat of the protestors: the sparklers they’ve lit, the flags they’ve set aflame. They are fighting and I cnn’t even muster the strength to free myself and my sister.
+
The incoming sun warmed our faces, and with it came more lights. A spotlight craned above, illuminating our bodies and every groove of the crater that held us. The rescue crew fitted harnesses around us, fastening and then tugging us up.
The earth was finally visible again, and I almost cried at the sight of a home that I’ve never been to, but that I knew was waiting for me. Of a war-torn place that I could never return to. It was so beautiful; I couldn’t tear my gaze from it. Even if I would never be allowed in. Even if I was told it would never belong to me.
Beside me, Farah sniffled. A man in fireman’s garb wiped the dust off her face. My own injuries were tended to; some scratches, inflamed lungs, bruising. But I was fine. We were both fine and it was bright outside.
Earthrise came, and we were free. We were free. And we didn’t have to fight.
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Yasmeen Amro is a Palestinian-American writer, currently living in Jordan. She volunteers as a first reader for an online magazine in her spare time. When she’s not procrastinating writing, she’s procrastinating painting and baking.