Remembrance Day - and remembering Malki

Malki's tiny handwriting in the diary she left behind

I was called last week by a young woman who asked me to speak about Malki to a group of teenage students who are on the verge of dropping out of school. She is doing her internship in education with these girls.

My knee jerk response was "No, that would be too difficult", even though she noted that her older sister had been a friend of Malki's. 

But then she added "Malki and Michal [the friend who was murdered with her] had decorated her sister's bedroom to welcome her home from an overseas trip on that day."

So I did a 180. Because on their last morning alive, Malki and Michal stood at my bedroom door to let me know about the room-decoration plan. I was in bed nursing one of my whopping migraines. I didn't even open my eyes to look at them - but it was the last time we spoke in person. 

But to this day, I can't forgive myself for passing up on that last chance to see my Malki's face.

And so I spoke about her earlier this week to six 15 year olds - the same age as Malki was when Ahlam Tamimi decided that she, Michal and 13 other Jews must die. 

I told them what a gifted flautist she was; how her music brought tears to my eyes at every concert of hers that I attended; about her devotion to her profoundly disabled younger sister and to other children with disabilities with whom she volunteered. 

I told them that often, as her sister was and remains, they were not only non-verbal but barely responsive at all. Few adults are capable of doing the work she did. 

 

I remembered how uplifted she was as she described the smile she had brought to a neighbor's child, dying of Canavan's Disease, when she sang him a song. She spent one summer helping out his single mother.

I told the six girls that Malki cherished her friendships, both at school and in her youth group, Ezra.  And mentioned the children there for whom she was a counselor in her last year of life and with whom she spent every other Shabbat in Ma'ale Adumim during her last year on earth. 

The mostly shredded new diary in Malki's bag

I showed them her diaries - the last one she wrote, kept in her microscopic handwriting to enable her to pack in the maximum text. And the new one which was found in her back-pack. It was void of entries and pummeled by the 10 kg bomb's nails.

I showed them photos of Malki and concluded with a very brief mention of our struggle to get Tamimi extradited from Jordan to the US. It isn't an issue I felt I could delve into for this audience. 

Afterwards, it was question time. They only asked one - which I couldn't really answer. "What have you learned, taken with you, from Malki?" 

After a pause I told them: "As her mother, I haven't learned from her. She was my child. What I am left with is only pain and grief. As I'm sure you have heard, the loss of a child is incomparable to any other.  But Malki's friends have told me that they did learn lessons from her. In particular, they carry with them her joy of living, her passion for life."

Thus began for me the difficult week of Yom Hazikaron - Remembrance Day.

Words my murdered child left behind

Every year at Yom Hazikaron time (it begins at sunset today), I comb through my Malki's last diary for an excerpt to publish. It isn't an easy task.

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.