First, it breaks my heart to read her words. And second, it is an eyestrain because her script is miniscule.
She tried her utmost to milk that pocket-sized diary for all it's worth. Details of nearly every day of her last year of life are recorded: youth group activities, quotes of her friends, tallies of hours studied for an exam, help she gave me in caring for her severely-disabled little sister, thoughts, worries. and records of every single terror attack and its victims.
When the pages didn't suffice, she would glue on strips of paper to enable her to complete the account. It's in the photo on the right.
Just as she squeezed every bit of writing possible into that diary, so too she squeezed into every day of her short, special life the experiences and deeds that spread joy and pleasure to everyone she encountered, whether through her words, her artwork or her flute and guitar playing.
What a precious girl she was.
And here below is a photo of the new diary she had just purchased and dedicated shortly before a Hamas terrorist, Ahlam Tamimi, cut short her life. Malki was carrying it in her backpack on that sunny, August afternoon.
The condition of the diary, which is here beside me, demonstrates the brutal force of those 10 kgs of explosives Tamimi used to execute the Sbarro massacre - the terrorist outrage she has publicly called "my operation".
In the diary entry of June 11, 2001 to which I randomly turned today and which I've photographed, she records something I remember her telling me that had touched her. She and her older brother, Shaya, went to buy themselves new glasses - and independently selected the identical frames.
She ended that day's entry:
"I studied all day. I didn't go to the snif [a Hebrew word that means her youth group's hangout]. I went in the middle on a tour with Mommy. And that's it."
I don't recall that tour. Nor can I imagine where it was. I will never know.
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