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........

© Pakistan Observer