Metal tubes, wirings, circuit boards, containers of chemicals that had to be measured exactly.

We worked carefully and methodically.

This was not something you rushed.

I was focused on mixing the propellant compound.

This was the most dangerous part.

The chemicals had to be combined in a specific order at specific temperatures.

Too hot and they would ignite too fast and they would react unpredictably.

Hassan was working on the guidance system.

Bilal was preparing the warhead assembly.

We worked in silence, each concentrating on our tasks.

I was measuring out the second chemical when I felt something strange.

It is hard to explain.

A feeling in my chest, like a weight, like a pressure.

I paused and looked around.

Everything seemed normal.

Hassan and Bilal were working.

The ventilation fan was humming.

Nothing was wrong.

But the feeling did not go away.

I almost said something.

Almost suggested we take a break.

But I pushed the feeling aside.

We had work to finish.

I went back to my measurements.

I was pouring the chemical into the mixing container when Bilal spoke.

He said something about the wiring configuration.

Hassan answered him, “I was not paying attention to their words.

I was watching the chemical level in the container.

Then I saw the spark.

Just a tiny flash of light from Bilal’s workstation.

A small arc of electricity where there should not have been one.

I open my mouth to shout a warning, but the spark reached the primary charge before any sound left my throat.

The explosion was immediate and massive.

I remember light, blinding white light that filled everything.

I remember the sensation of being thrown backward.

I remember heat.

I remember the sound so loud it seemed to come from inside my own head rather than outside.

Then I remember hitting something hard.

The wall maybe or the floor.

Pain shot through my body.

Sharp intense pain everywhere at once.

I tried to breathe but could not.

There was dust and smoke and something burning.

I could not see, could not hear except for a highpitched ringing.

Could not move.

I thought this is it.

This is how I die.

I thought of Aliyah, of Tariq and Ila and Omar.

I thought they are waiting for me to come home for dinner.

I will not come home.

The pain started to fade.

Everything started to fade.

The heat, the smoke, the ringing, the light, all of it was fading away into darkness.

I felt myself letting go, sinking, falling into the darkness.

My last conscious thought was strange.

It was not about my family or my work or Allah or anything I expected.

It was just a simple observation almost curious.

So this is what dying feels like.

Then there was nothing.

Nothing at all.

Just darkness and silence and the sensation of falling forever into an empty void.

I was dead.

But I was not gone.

Not completely.

I became aware again.

But it was different from any awareness I had ever experienced.

I could think, but I had no body.

I could sense, but not with eyes or ears or any physical organ.

I existed but in a way I cannot properly explain in words.

The darkness was absolute, not like closing your eyes in a dark room.

Not like a moonless night.

This was darkness that seemed to have substance that seemed to press in from all sides that seemed alive somehow.

I tried to understand what was happening.

Was this death? Was this the transition? The Quran spoke about the time between death and resurrection.

I waited for something.

Angels perhaps, Monkar and Nakir, who were supposed to come and question the dead.

I waited for light or voices or anything that matched what I had been taught to expect.

Instead, I felt myself moving, being pulled downward, always downward.

The movement accelerated.

I was falling though I had nothing to fall with.

The sensation was sickening, terrifying.

I tried to stop it, to resist it, but I had no way to do that.

I had nobody to brace with, no hands to grab onto anything, no voice to cry out with.

The darkness changed.

It somehow became darker.

I did not think that was possible, but it did.

And with the deeper darkness came a smell.

Sulfur, rot, burning, all mixed together into something so foul it would have made me vomit if I still had a stomach.

And then I heard the screaming.

At first it was distant, like something carried on wind from far away.

But it grew louder as I fell.

Many voices, hundreds, thousands, all screaming, wailing, crying out in agony.

The sound was worse than the smell.

It was the sound of pure suffering, of hopeless, endless pain, of despair so complete there were no words adequate to describe it.

I wanted to cover my ears.

I wanted to shut it out, but I could not.

The screaming filled everything, filled me, became the only thing that existed beside the darkness and the falling.

Then the falling stopped.

I was somewhere.

I had arrived.

But where? Slowly something like vision returned to me.

I could see though I do not know how or with what.

The darkness receded just enough that I could make out shapes.

landscape, other figures.

What I saw froze something inside me.

I was standing on cracked, barren ground that seemed to stretch forever in all directions.

The earth, if you could call it that, was black and broken.

Cracks ran through it like wounds, and from these cracks came orange and red light.

Fire.

Everything was lit by fire, burning beneath the surface.

The heat was unbearable.

I felt like I was inside an oven surrounded by flames, but somehow not burning, just suffering the heat without end.

And everywhere in every direction were people, thousands upon thousands of people, maybe millions, all in various states of torment.

Some were wandering aimlessly, their faces twisted in anguish.

Some were on the ground writhing.

Some were reaching upward, crying out for help that did not come.

Some were completely still, frozen in expressions of horror.

I wanted to deny what I was seeing.

I wanted it to be a dream, a hallucination from the explosion, anything but reality.

But I knew deep in whatever I was now, I knew exactly where I was.

This was hell.

Not the metaphorical hell that some modern scholars talked about.

Not a temporary state of purification.

This was the real hell.

The hell that the prophets warned about.

The hell that I had heard about since childhood but never really believed was literal.

And I was there.

The realization hit me like a physical blow.

Terror flooded through me.

pure absolute terror unlike anything I had ever felt in life because I understood what this meant.

This was forever.

This was eternity.

This was where I would stay in this heat and darkness and suffering for all time with no end.

I tried to scream but I could not make a sound come out.

I tried to run but I could not move.

I was frozen there, surrounded by countless others in the same state.

Then I started to recognize faces.

Not far from me, I saw Khaled.

He had been a fighter in Hamas, killed in an Israeli air strike three years before.

We had held a big funeral for him.

The Imam had spoken about him being a martyr, about him being in paradise with the other righteous ones.

We had all believed it.

But he was here, not in paradise.

Here in this place of torment.

His face was twisted in agony.

He was crying out, but no sound reached me.

He looked at me and our eyes met.

The recognition in his eyes was clear.

And there was something else there.

Desperation.

He was trying to tell me something.

I moved toward him.

I do not know how.

I simply moved and the distance between us closed.

When I was near him, I could hear his voice.

It was horsearo and broken like he had been screaming forever.

He said, “We were deceived.

All of us.

We were all deceived.

” I tried to ask him what he meant, but he continued as if he could not hear me.

As if he was simply repeating words he had said countless times before.

He said, “There are no rewards here.

No rivers, no gardens, no virgins, nothing we were promised.

Only this, only suffering, only fire and darkness, and no hope of it ever ending.

” He reached toward me, but could not touch me.

His hand passed through where I was as if I was not solid.

He said, “Tell them.

” You have to tell them.

Tell everyone it’s not too late for them but it is too late for us.

Tell them about Jesus.

Only Jesus.

We were wrong about everything.

I did not understand Jesus.

Why was he talking about Jesus? Jesus was a prophet, a good man, but not the way to salvation.

That was what I had always been taught.

But before I could form a question, Khaled was pulled away.

Something dragged him backward into the darkness, still crying outwards, I could no longer hear, I looked around frantically.

Everywhere I looked, I saw people I recognized, fellow fighters, men I had prayed beside in the mosque, people who had died as martyrs for the cause.

And they were all here, all suffering, all in torment.

I saw Muhammad who had blown himself up at a checkpoint taking three Israeli soldiers with him.

I saw Rashid who had been shot during a raid on a settlement.

I saw Farukq who had spent his whole adult life fighting for Palestinian liberation and died of his wounds in a safe house.

All martyrs, all believers, all here.

I saw clerics too.

Religious men I had respected, shakes who had taught me about Islam, imams who had led prayers and given sermons, men who had spent their lives studying the Quran and hadith.

They were here too.

One of them saw me and rushed toward me with a speed that was unnatural.

It was Sheik Hassan, a man who had been famous throughout Gaza for his knowledge and piety.

He had died two years before I did.

I had attended his funeral.

Thousands had mourned him.

His face was different from the others.

Not just anguish, but something else.

Guilt.

Overwhelming guilt that seemed to radiate from him.

When he reached me, he grabbed at me with hands that passed through my form.

He spoke in a rush, words stumbling over each other in desperate haste.

He said, “I taught thousands.

Thousands.

They listened to me.

They believed me.

And I taught them lies.

Not intentionally.

I believed it too.

But I was wrong.

And now they will all come here because of what I taught them.

” As I see them arriving day after day.

people I taught, people who trusted me and they end up here because of my words.

He was weeping.

Tears ran down his face and evaporated in the heat before they could fall.

He said, “Tell them I was wrong.

Tell them to ignore everything.

” I said, “Tell them about Jesus.

He is the only way, the only truth, the only life.

” We were wrong about him.

So wrong.

Tell them please.

You have to tell them.

Then he too was pulled away.

Still crying out.

I tried to process what I was hearing.

These men, these righteous fighters and scholars, they were all saying the same thing.

They were all talking about Jesus.

They were all saying we had been wrong.

But how could we have been wrong? Islam was the final revelation.

Muhammad was the final prophet.

The Quran was the perfect word of God.

I had built my entire life on these truths.

More souls crowded around me, not touching but near, all trying to speak to me, all trying to give me the same message.

A woman I did not recognize pushed forward.

She was crying hysterically.

She said, “I died last year.

I was devout my whole life.

I prayed, I fasted, I gave charity, I covered myself, I did everything right, everything I was taught.

And I woke up here, here.

And no, no one will tell me why.

No one will explain.

There is just the fire and the screaming and no hope.

No hope at all.

A young man, barely 20, grabbed at me with hands that could not grip.

He said, “I was a suicide boomer.

They told me I would go straight to paradise.

They showed me verses from the Quran.

They promised me everything.

I believed them.

I blew myself up and killed 17 people.

And I open my eyes here.

Not not in paradise.

Here.

And the faces of those 17 people, I see them constantly.

They haunt me.

And there is no forgiveness here.

No second chance, no mercy.

An old man pushed through the crowd.

He said, “I studied religion for 60 years.

” 60 years.

I memorized the entire Quran.

I could recite all the major hadith collections.

I taught at the university.

I wrote books about Islamic Jewish prudence.

And I died and came here and realized I had wasted my entire life.

Worse than wasted it.

I led others astray.

And now they are here too because of me.

The voices over overlapped.

A cacophony of suffering and regret and desperate warnings.

All saying the same thing in different ways.

We were wrong.

We were deceived.

Only Jazz is is the truth.

Tell the living.

Warn them.

It’s not too late for them, but it’s too late for us.

I wanted to shut it out.

I wanted to deny it, but I could not.

because I could see it.

I could see the truth of it in their faces, in their voices, in the very reality of where we were.

I had believed I was serving God by making bombs.

I had believed I would be rewarded for fighting.

I had believed that my devotion and my sacrifices would earn me paradise.

But I was here in hell just like all these others who had believed the same things.

And if we were here, if all our devotion and fighting and religious observance meant nothing, then everything I had believed was a lie.

The weight of that realization crushed me.

I felt myself sinking, being pulled down into the cracked ground beneath my feet.

Chains appeared around me, though I could not see them.

I could only feel them, heavy, tight, binding me.

I understood then this was my place.

This was where I belonged.

I had made bombs that killed people.

I had caused suffering and death.

I had taken lives.

Children had died because of devices I built with my own hands.

And this was my judgment.

This was my eternity.

The heat intensified.

The screaming grew louder.

The darkness pressed in closer and I felt something else.

Memories.

Every bomb I had ever made.

Every operation I had supplied, every death that resulted from my work.

I saw their faces.

Civilians caught in explosions.

children, women, old men, people who were just going about their lives when the devices I created tore them apart.

I saw a little girl, maybe 6 years old, killed when a rocket hit near a bus stop.

I saw a young mother, pregnant, caught in an explosion at a checkpoint.

I saw an elderly couple killed in their home when a wall collapsed from a blast.

And I realized something horrible.

I had told myself I was only targeting soldiers, but that had been a lie.

I told myself to sleep at night.

I knew civilians died.

I had always known.

And I had continued anyway.

The guilt was worse than the heat, worse than the darkness, worse than the chains and the screaming and everything else.

The guilt was a living thing that ate at me from the inside.

I cried out, not words, just a wordless cry of anguish and despair.

I cried out for mercy, for forgiveness, for anything.

But there was no answer, just more heat, more darkness, more suffering.

I thought this is forever.

There is no escape, no relief, no end.

Just this always this for eternity.

And that realization was the worst torture of all.

I do not know how long I stayed like that.

Time had no meaning in that place.

It could have been minutes or years or centuries.

There was just the eternal now of suffering.

But then something changed.

A light appeared in the distance.

Small at first, just a pinpoint in the darkness.

But it grew.

It moved closer.

And as it approached, the heat lessened.

The screaming faded.

The darkness receded.

The light was different from the red and orange glow of the fires beneath the ground.

This light was white, pure, clean.

It hurt to look at, but in a different way than the darkness hurt.

This was the pain of seeing something too beautiful, too perfect for eyes accustomed to hell.

The other souls around me scattered.

They moved away from the light as if it burned them worse than the fire.

They fled into the darkness, crying out, but I could not move.

I was frozen there as the light approached.

And then I saw him, a figure in the light, a man, but more than a man.

He radiated power and authority and something else.

Love, overwhelming, incomprehensible love that poured out from him in waves.

I knew who he was immediately without being told, without any doubt.

It was Jesus, not the prophet Jesus I had learned about in Islam.

This was different.

This was God himself in human form.

I could feel it, could sense it in every part of whatever I was.

He walked toward me through that place of torment and everywhere he stepped, the fire went out.

The ground became solid and whole.

The darkness fled.

He stopped in front of me and he looked at me.

His eyes were kind but also full of sorrow.

He looked at me the way a father looks at a son who has made terrible choices.

disappointed, sad, but still loving.

I wanted to speak, to explain, to defend myself, to ask for mercy, but no words would come.

I just stood there or whatever.

Past for standing in that place and looked back at him.

Then he spoke.

His voice was quiet, but it seemed to fill everything.

It was the most beautiful and the most terrible sound I had ever heard.

He said, “It is not yet your time.

” I did not understand.

What did that mean? He raised his hand and I saw the scars there, scars from nails driven through his flesh.

And I saw the same scars on his feet.

And I knew that he had died too, that he had suffered too.

But he had done it willingly.

done it for people like me.

The understanding flooded into me.

This was God who had become human and died to pay for human sins, to pay for my sins.

And I had rejected him.

I had called him just a prophet.

I had denied his sacrifice.

And that denial had brought me here.

Jesus looked at me with those sad loving eyes and said, “You must choose.

Your time to choose is not yet finished, but it will finish soon.

And then your choice will be final.

Images flashed through my mind.

My life, every moment, every choice, every thought and deed and word.

I saw it all from his perspective.

I saw the times he had tried to reach me.

Dreams I had dismissed.

Encounters with Christians I had ignored.

Moments of doubt I had pushed away.

He had been pursuing me my entire life and I had run from him.

I saw the deaths I had caused through a different lens.

Not as casualties of war or collateral damage.

As people, individuals, each one loved by him.

each one a soul he had died for.

And I had cut short their lives without giving them a chance to find him.

The weight of it broke me.

Whatever I was in that place, it broke.

I collapsed though I had no knees to collapse on.

I cried out though I had no voice to cry with.

I wept though I had no eyes to produce tears.

And I begged.

I begged for forgiveness.

I begged for mercy.

I begged for another chance.

Jesus reached down and touched me.

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