by Muhammad Mohsin Iqbal
I do not know how old I am anymore. The days have lost their names. I only know I was a child of Gaza once, playing between the walls that have now fallen into dust. Now I lie in a hospital bed in a country not my own, with bandages where my arms should be strong, with a window that shows me no home, only a sky I do not belong to. The television at the end of the ward is my only companion, its voices louder than my pain when the doctors grow silent. It shows the rulers of the world in New York, standing at a great hall they call the United Nations, speaking with polished words as if words could rebuild a childhood.
They say the United Nations was once the roof under which quarrels ended and peace began. To me it is only a place where speeches are made while we bleed. I heard them speak of Palestine, of Gaza, of recognition, as though giving us a chair in their grand assembly might heal our wounds. They spoke of dignity, but I wonder if dignity can return my father who never left the rubble, or my sister whose small hands now belong to the earth.
In Gaza, before the bombs, we had little but we had life. My mother grew strawberries in the cracks of our soil, my brother chased the birds along the shore, and I dreamt of becoming a teacher. But then the skies split open with fire. Now they say more than thirty-eight thousand of us are gone. Numbers, they call us. Numbers that scroll across the screen while I whisper names; my uncle Mahmoud, my cousin Huda, my neighbor who gave me oranges. They are not numbers. They are my world.
I watch the men in suits argue about hostages, about resolutions, about vetoes. They do not argue about my hunger, about the thirst that burned my throat until water tasted of salt and blood, about the medicine that never came until my wounds grew black. They talk of history, of law, of legitimacy, while my friends are lowered into the soil without shrouds. They say Palestine is a “non-member observer,” as if those words mean more than the cries of children running barefoot through smoke.
One night on the television, I heard them speak of April 18, when twelve of fifteen countries lifted their hands for us. But one hand, from America, came down heavy enough to silence them all. I am too young to understand power, but I know what silence feels like—it feels like lying in the dark of a collapsing house waiting for someone to come, and no one comes.
They call Gaza uninhabitable now. I do not know the word, but I know my street has no doors, only broken bricks. I know the school where I learned my letters is now a shelter where even babies weep from hunger. I know my grandfather’s olive tree, older than me, lies uprooted and burned, its roots curled like the fingers of the dead.
I do not understand politics, but I understand famine. My belly aches even here, far from Gaza, because my heart is still there. I understand loss; the strawberry fields my mother loved are gone, and so is she. They say recognition has come at last, that nations have admitted we exist, that we are worthy of statehood. But can recognition kiss my mother’s forehead one last time? Can it stop my brother’s empty chair from haunting me at night?
I listen to their speeches, and they sound beautiful. They speak of humanity, of rights, of peace. But when the screen goes black, I am left with silence—the silence that watched Gaza burn. Recognition, they say, is better late than never. But to me it feels like flowers laid on a grave. Noble, perhaps, but too late for the one buried beneath.
I am only a child. I do not ask for thrones or titles. I ask for bread that does not taste of ashes. I ask for water that does not poison my lips. I ask for books, for a school, for a morning without the sound of jets. I ask that when they speak of Palestine, they remember not the halls of New York but the broken toys scattered across the ruins of Gaza.
If the United Nations is truly the home of nations, then let them know that Gaza is more than a question on their agenda. Gaza is my home. Gaza is the graveyard of my family. Gaza is the wound of the earth. They may recognize Palestine in their resolutions, but Palestine has already been recognized by blood, by soil, by the tears of mothers who still call their children’s names into the dust.
I am that child who still dreams, even from a hospital bed, that one day Gaza will be more than rubble, that the world will remember not only what was destroyed but what can still be saved. But tonight, as I close my eyes, all I see are speeches on a television screen, and all I hear are the echoes of bombs that spoke louder than their words.
