I have three cousins living at the Rotana Hotel on Sheikh Zayed Road. I have three Lebanese cousins, aged eighteen, twenty-four and twenty-eight, living a million miles away from everything they've ever known and loved. I have three cousins living in a hotel because their house, the house they were born in, is now a pile of stones. As indeterminable as the pebbles on the beach.

I have three cousins, two of which attended the same university, two of which were playing basketball on the university courts less than twenty-four hours before it was reduced to blood and wreckage, I have three cousins living in a hotel for almost a month now. In the wreckage, a piece of the bombshell says it was manufactured in the United States of America.

I have three cousins who call their parents everyday and hold their breaths because there's a part of them that doesn't think they'll be there to answer the phone. I have three cousins, eyes dark and cheeks hallowed, who tell me that the house their parents have been hiding out in, the windows have shattered and the door blew in. I have three cousins who think their parents are going to die, and they don't know why.

This war is not waged against faceless strangers. This war is not taking place in a barren battlefield. This is my family. These are real people.

I just want it to stop.

Trail of blood...