War blurs things.

People say this a lot, when they run out of better things to say—and usually they’re talking about right and wrong— “War blurs the lines between right and wrong.”—and are they right or wrong about that?

“It’s their own fault for keeping weapons in a hospital.”—people say this a lot. “Their parents voted for this.”—“ They should have thought of that before October 7th.”— they aren’t hard to find, the people who say this. They aren’t hard ghosts to chase.

War blurs things—I do believe this is true. More than just right and wrong. War blurs lots of things. It blurs day and night. The time difference between Boston and Gaza is 7 hours. The people on the ground—my people—are usually trying to go to sleep when for me it’s just creeping into late afternoon.

War blurs the lines between asleep and awake, anyhow. It’s 6:24 PM when my friend Israa Wael Abu Naji tells me that she’s ready for an interview—for me; for her, it’s 1:24 AM. There’s nothing rude about that. It was after midnight already when I’d first asked if she could sit down and talk at some point over the next few days. I hadn’t expected her to answer so quickly—but that’s my own fault. I haven’t gotten any good at expecting these things, yet, somehow. She hasn’t gotten a single good night’s sleep in all of the eight months—or is it nine, now?—war blurs this week and the next—nine months since her fiance’s head was blown off of his body by a missile. Since the rest of his family was left scattered about the ground as bits. We’ve become friends. She’s shown me the grave where all of their parts were buried together. War blurs him and her and everyone else.

اول مرة عندما كنت أعيش في الخيمة وكانت تطلق علينا الرصاص بشكل مباشر ومرعب وكنا ال نعرف أين سنختبأ منها .. الن الخيمة كانت عبار> عن قطعة نايلون ال تحمينا من رصاص تلك الطائرة

[The first time was when I was living in a tent and they were shooting at us directly and terrifyingly and we didn’t know where to hide from them... because the tent was just a piece of nylon that didn’t protect us from the bullets of that plane.]

We speak back and forth—I use English, she uses Arabic. It’s amazing what machines let you do. But of course sometimes things get lost—blurred. She uses a word that Google translates as “plane”— but what she’s really talking about is a quadcopter—a small, four-rotored helicopter drone that Israeli forces use for reconnaissance, combat, and assassinations—among other things, allegedly.

I’m very interested in that “allegedly”. That’s the ghost I’m chasing, today—tonight.

“We can distinguish it in the sky by its red and blue lights, and it is close by,” says Palestinian poet Nura Aklouk, in English. “Two days ago, it fired on some tents next to us.”

Ahmad Jamal Nassar, a 35-year-old teacher displaced from the North of Gaza to Deir Al-Balah, expands, also in English:

They can shoot fire and bombs now.

My cousin has been killed by one of them.

He was trying to collect some wood from Rafah to sell it to people and get some money to feed his innocent kids.

Then the quadcopter shot him.

They appear suddenly.

They always appear in dangerous areas.

Or when they want to do a military task.”

“It directly kills anyone who moves in the streets and sometimes in homes,” says Nura.

“Nobody can go out at midnight,” says Ahmed. “It’s so dangerous. People don’t prefer to go out at night because they know quadcopter sometimes shoot fire at them.”

“Was it in the day, or in the night?” I ask Israa, about the attack on the tent—bullets through the fabric. And what I really mean to ask is if there’s ever a moment where it’s safe. There’s something else I’m chasing.

في النهار ولكن االصوات المرعبة التي تصدرها تكون في الليل

During the day
But the terrifying sounds it makes are at night.

And there it is; the ghost. “Terrifying sounds”. For weeks, I’ve been on this hunt. _____

The drones are a new discovery of this war for the people of Gaza—like so many things are a new discovery for me—for so many of us, here, on the outside. Israa describes to me a scene that seems more from a dystopian science-fiction movie than real life:

دخلت بيت اقاربي وقامت بتصويرهم ومن ثم خروجها عندما دخلت عليهم داخل بيتهم قالوا لي بأنهم شعروا بالرعب الشديد ولم يتحركوا خوفا من اطالق النار عليهم واحيانا كانت تطلق صوت تطلب به من الناس رفع بطاقتهم الشخصية صوت يقول ال تتحرك ارفعوا الهوية .. ومن ثم ويرفع الجميع بطاقة الهوية الخاصة بهم ً تدخل المنزل وتصدر ا

“It entered my relatives' house, took pictures of them, and then left.
When I entered their house, they told me that they were very terrified and did not move for fear of being shot at. Sometimes, it would make a sound asking people to show their ID cards.
It enters the house and makes a voice saying ‘don't move, raise your ID’.. and then everyone raises their ID card”
When she mentions an “ID card”, what she is referring to is the system of identification and control that has been used by the IDF in both Gaza and the West Bank for well over fifty years. Palestinians are issued green ID-cards (as compared to the blue ones issued to Israeli citizens), which are required for them to access social services and travel outside of designated areas, and which also cut them off from significant access (similarly, in the West Bank, Palestinian vehicles are issued special license-plates which prevent them from accessing “Jewish-Only” roads).

Ahmed confirms the drones’ ability to produce sounds:

“Yes they have speakers system. They have something like recorders.

Esraa tells me that the drone that came into her relatives’ house came in through the window.

تدخل بيوتهم الن جميع بيوت السكان ال يوجد بها شبابيك بسبب التعرض للقصف القريب

They enter their homes because none of the residents' homes have windows due to exposure to nearby shelling.”

War blurs inside and outside.

اما بالنسبة لصوت محركاتها فهو يشبه صوت الشاحنة تكون قريبة جدا وواضحة صوتها عالي جدا انام وانا خائفة وقلقة

As for the sound of its engines, it is similar to the sound of a truck.
It is very close and clear
It’s very loud
I sleep scared and anxious.

Israa is up most nights, more often than not. How she finds the energy during the day to distribute aid, or talk about her life is beyond me.

Sleep-deprivation as a tactic of torture is well-known. In both the infamous Guantanamo Bay Prison, and in American Prisons in general, as well as camps on the Southern border, there is an extensive history of using bright lights, disruptive noises, and deliberately timed drills, exercises, and inspections to damage inmate sleep-cycles, sometimes in an attempt (though provably ineffective) to extract information, and sometimes simply as an infliction of the sort of life that our culture seems to silently believe that certain people deserve. These practices are illegal, of course, under both international and domestic law—but they are besides the point.

The point, for me, at least, is something else Israa has mentioned to me before. “Tell me more about the sounds,” I ask her.

تصدر أصوات كأنها حقيقية .. تسمع صوت بكاء الطفل كأنه حقيقي .. وصراخ النساء أيضا كأنه حقيقي .. وأحيانا تصدر صو نباح كالب

It makes sounds as if they are real.. You hear the sound of a child crying as if it is real.. And the screams of women as if it is real.. And sometimes it makes the sound of dogs barking.

She is the fifth person now to tell me this, what people have been swearing to me— “Wallah”.

A not-so-often-discussed aspect of being an American activist very openly engaged in the pro-Palestinian movement—on LinkedIn, for instance, or Instagram—is that you find yourself on the receiving end of a great deal of desperate outreach. People in all parts of Gaza, North and South, and even their family-members who have already evacuated or have been living abroad will frequently cold-message (not quite the same ring as “cold-call”) accounts with a “Ceasefire Now” banner or something similar—and the messages start to blur together over time. They tell the story of an individual or a family. They talk about the circumstances in Nuseirat, or Rafah, or Deir Al-Balah, or Khan Yunis. They apologize for asking for help.

I give when I can. We should all give when we can—this is one of those moments in history, you know? The kind we’ll all look back on. But rent prices in Boston are high and getting higher. Let’s not even talk about food and gas. The way I make it a little easier for myself to give is to ask for something in exchange, afterwards—a story. “Tell me a story about your life in the last few weeks/months/years.”— and people never hesitate, even after they’ve already received my contribution. Everyone is jumping at the chance to talk more about what has happened to them, and all around them—to bear witness— “Wallah,” they say, “Wallah.”— “I swear it.”— this is what they have seen, they are testifying. And what do they tell me?

They tell me about the sounds.

Nura was one of the first to mention it to me:

“Sometimes it may terrorize and frighten people by making sounds of women’s screams and cries for help.”

“Yes they have speakers system,” Ahmed confirms. “Sometimes they can talk to people , they can send dogs bark they can send children crying.”

The stories I’ve heard from others are very similar, with a particular emphasis on cries for help. Sumya Abumustafa, a 28-year-old mother of two young girls, 3 and 4 years old, tells me about her experiences living in the Nuseirat camp before being displaced (again):

“In the Nuseirat camp, near our house, before it was bombed, it used to go down between the houses and stand at the windows to photograph those in the house.”

She tells me about the sounds—and it’s more of the same:

“A lot of them are children's sounds, truck sounds, dog sounds, and tank sounds.”

Israa also started telling me about these sounds back in August, when we were first becoming acquainted. She mentioned them to me somewhat casually when I’d asked why she’d been having so much trouble sleeping lately:

“Last night, the quadcopter made sounds of a woman crying and screaming in a very frightening voice”

This was on August 8th. A little over two weeks later, on the 25th, she mentioned them again: “There is a sound of someone screaming from the quadcopter.”

Nura tells me without being asked:

“The goal of these sounds is for people to come out to answer the call for help and then kill them.”

When I ask Sumya how she knows the difference— which sounds are real and fake— she explains that the only way to really be sure is after the fact:

لم نكن نعلم أنه زائف اال بعد خروج عدد من الناس وقتلهم عرفنا الحقيقه

We didn't know it was fake until after a number of people went out and were killed, we knew the truth.

She tells me more, in English:

“When it was making children's sounds, a young man came out to save them and they killed him.”

Sumya doesn’t know how many people have died this way— it’s blurred, like so many things: “Many stories die with the death of their heroes,” she tells me.

This was when I began to chase my ghost in earnest. At first, results were easy— it’s a quick Google-search to find a few videos on the topic. The pro-Palestinian YouTube channel “AJ+” has a video compiled, containing several testimonies. One anonymous Palestinian bears witness (translated):

“Yesterday, a young man was martyred. Poor guy went to see what the sound was in school. Of course he was sniped.”

A boy from Nuseirat tells a similar story (translated):

This person went outside when he heard a woman screaming for help. It was 1:30 at night. Suddenly, we heard a woman shouting in the middle of the street, ‘Help!’ with a baby also asking for help. The voice was coming from outside of the house door. It was a quadcopter with four propellers. It headed towards the tents, broadcasting the same cry. We called my cousin in the tents and told him ‘Don’t fall for it. It’s just a sound system.’ Abu Anas al-Shahrour, they shot him in the head.”

The Times of India has also done some light reporting on the subject. In this video, more anonymous testimony is given from a resident of Nuseirat camp (translated):

“I heard a woman’s desperate cries pleading for help, lamenting, ‘Help me, my son has been martyred.’ The eerie sound echoed through the streets, unsettling and bizarre.”

A Snopes investigation is neither able to categorically confirm or deny the reports—at least not those centered around the events of April 14th and 15th, cited in the article. Those to whom I have spoken reference events happening much more recently—a pattern, if true. The investigation cites the same AJ+ video previously mentioned, but includes more footage and audio, including what sounds like a distant baby crying. According to the article, this is the only known recording of these sounds.

The edge of the ghost.

As Snopes itself puts it, “*There are reasons to be cautious of these claims. Despite the claim being viewed or shared millions of times, there are few known eyewitnesses to the events. There appears to be only one video purporting to show the drones playing the audio of crying babies. *

*Despite the appearance of widespread corroboration, the claims as they have been reported can be traced to the words of just a few individuals amplified by activist accounts on social media.” *

True enough, I can’t find any other footage, either— only a series of articles and thinkpieces constantly linking to and citing each other, and that same, singular video, over and over. Even interviewing my contacts, it is hard to find more. I ask Sumya for a recording of the sounds, but she can’t provide one— it’s too dangerous to stay near the drones long enough to open up your phone, she has daughters, she can’t take the risk. Fair enough. I ask Ahmed for a recording— he can’t provide one; he has twenty other people to take care of. He doesn’t have the time to go searching. I ask Nura for a recording, but she can’t provide one. She can barely find enough food to eat. She can barely find clean drinking water— if at all. Fair enough. I ask Israa for a recording, and she says she will try.

So she tries. And she tries.