Raghda

Raghda is a three-year old lovely child who lived in a big and happy family. She was the youngest, yet the most energetic and lively. Every day, she used to wake up early and walk towards her mother and lie down next to her. With her tiny fingers, she starts to play with her mother’s face. This innocent play wakes up the mother. They had an old but functioning alarm clock, but Raghda used to wake up before the alarm goes off. The mother gets up from bed, walks her little child to the kitchen, and starts preparing breakfast while Raghda is busy eating a piece of bread. From the kitchen, breakfast’s incense slinks into the bedrooms declaring breakfast time which wakes up the rest of the family. People start to get up, wash their faces, brush their teeth, and head to the dining room. At that time, Raghda has already had her breakfast; so she starts to look for fun. One of her most favorable fun is to embrace her father’s head trying to jump on his shoulders. He has no choice but to go with the flow; so he starts to tickle her. At this moment, her laughter fills the place out declaring a new happy day.

One day, Raghda’s eldest brother, Ahmad, woke up sweaty and feeling hot. “What a hot sun!”, he said, and plodded towards the window and closed the curtains. Just before he lied in bed, he glanced at the wall clock. “Oh my God, It’s almost 9! Why no one woke me up?”, Ahmad wondering. He got up again and sat on the bed’s edge yawning and rubbing his eyes. While washing his face, he realized that something unusual had happened; breakfast time was not declared on that day. He walked to the dining room but nobody was there. Then he walked to the kitchen and found that no breakfast had been prepared. He stood confused for a while in the kitchen and then walked to the parent’s bedroom. He was surprised when he saw the bedroom’s door open and no one was inside. Worried and baffled, he rushed into his siblings’ bedrooms. He felt much reassured when he found them sleeping. On the way back to the kitchen, he realized that he didn’t see Raghda in her bed. He went to check again, and yes, Raghda was not there. Suddenly, the house door opened slowly and the father walked in alone with tearful eyes. Ahmad became horrified and asked his father in a panicky tone “what is going on?”, but the father didn’t reply. After prolonged prevailing silence, the father answered Ahmad’s question with a grievous voice.

All possibilities and options were discussed with the physician, the only choice was chemotherapy. Even though, prognosis was very poor. The physician told the parents that leukemia in late stages is hard or even impossible to cure, but they needed to decide whether to try chemotherapy treatment or not. That probably was the toughest decision they ever needed to make; especially with the poor prognosis of her disease. They felt that she will suffer even more from chemotherapy while at the same time she had no chance. Days later, they decided not to try chemotherapy and let her leave this world peacefully. Hearts were broken, the world was getting darker, and time was running too fast. Ever since that day, morning declaration becomes solely the job of that same old alarm clock.