The motorbike is overturned on the asphalt. The front wheel is still spinning. The father lies six meters from the girl. The girl is sitting on the asphalt. The drone cannot be seen. It can be heard.

The drone is called Heron. It is at four hundred meters altitude. The first strike arrived seven seconds ago.

The girl is twelve years old. Her name is Salam. She touches her head. Under her hair there is something wet. She looks at her palm. The palm is red.

The asphalt is hot. It is noon. It is Saturday, May 9. The road is the one that leads to the Nabatieh market. Salam takes it in the morning with her father.

The father's name is Yusuf. He is Syrian, from Daraa. He has lived in Nabatieh since 2022. He works as a mason.

Yusuf says "stop."

The drone hums. It moves closer. It moves away. It does not leave.

Salam's jeans are new. Her mother bought them at the Thursday market. They were on sale. The left knee is broken, the jeans are torn. Above the right eyebrow there is a wound three centimeters long.

Yusuf is breathing. The white shirt rises and falls.

Yusuf says "stop" again. The voice is low.

Salam looks at her father. The drone is still there.

In Nabatieh, today, the drone also struck on a road in Bedias. There a man died. Thirteen are wounded. Six are children. Two are women.

In Nabatieh, today, the drone strikes motorbikes twice. Three times if the motorbikes stop.

The father is silent.

Salam puts her right hand on the asphalt. The asphalt burns her palm. She pulls herself with her elbow. She moves her right leg. She drags herself one meter.

The drone's hum does not change.

Salam drags herself another meter.

The father is silent.

Salam drags herself another meter. She is three meters from Yusuf.

She sees better. Yusuf's eyes are open. He is looking at the sky. On the white shirt there is a red stain that is spreading.

She drags herself again. She is two meters away.

The hum changes. It rises an octave. The hum is the one from the first strike.

Yusuf says a word. Salam does not hear it: the hum is too close.

Salam reaches out her hand. She touches her father's hand. Her father's hand is warm.

The second strike arrives.

When it arrives, Salam is saying her father's name. She says it once. She says it a second time. The second time she does not finish it.

Thirty-two seconds after the second strike, the third arrives. The third is the one that will operate on Salam's head, abdomen, right thigh. Salam arrives at Nabih Berri hospital in Nabatieh at twelve eighteen.

Yusuf died at the second strike. Salam will die after the operation.

The number of dead, in southern Lebanon, Saturday, May 9, at twenty-two hundred, is thirty-nine. Yusuf is one. Salam not yet.

The Israeli army declared it is verifying the incident.

Yusuf's white shirt had been washed Wednesday. Salam, on Wednesday afternoon, had helped her mother hang it on the terrace. The clothesline was stretched between the kitchen wall and the concrete pillar of the terrace. The shirt had taken two hours to dry. Her mother had told Salam not to touch the shirt while it was still wet, because the white cuff got dirty easily. Salam had not touched it.

In Nabatieh, Saturday, May 9, at twelve seventeen, the asphalt of the market road was hot like June.

Three days earlier, in the living room, Yusuf had checked the calendar on the kitchen wall and had told Salam that on Saturday the 9th they would go to the market to buy the onions and the bread. He had said the onions and the bread, in that order, because onions cost more than bread and Yusuf preferred to buy what cost more first. It was a rule of his. Salam knew it.

The motorbike was a Honda CG 125. Yusuf had bought it secondhand in 2023 from a mechanic in Nabatieh named Hassan. He had paid six hundred fifty American dollars in four installments. The plate was Lebanese. Yusuf did not have a Lebanese license, he had a Syrian license. The Syrian license, in Lebanon, is valid for urban travel.

Salam, on the motorbike, sat behind her father, with her arms around his waist. Salam's arms, on the market road on May 9 at twelve seventeen, had been around Yusuf's waist until the moment of the first strike.

The fruit seller at the Nabatieh market, Saturday, May 9 at twelve twenty-five, sold onions to a woman from Bedias. The woman paid with a ten-thousand Lebanese lira note and received two thousand five hundred in change. The fruit seller did not hear the first strike. He heard the third. He stopped weighing.

The Israeli army conducted, Saturday, May 9, according to data from the Lebanese ministry of health updated at twenty-two hundred the same day, eighty-nine strikes on Lebanese territory. Thirty-nine civilian victims. Seventeen seriously wounded. Six of the wounded are children.

Salam, in surgery, at twelve forty-three, says her father's name. She says it once. She says it a second time. The second time she does not finish it.