Tuesday 29/1/2024

Esam - Day 115 of the Massacre

How Does a Child Fall? 

During our childhood, we’d fall down on the floor running after our toys. We’ve learnt nothing from our falls other than that running after what we want will remain merely running, even if we shed tears. We run despite our mothers’ precautions and fear that something bad might happen to us. Childhood knows no bounds or limits; all that is on earth belongs to children. 

This aggression has made a child’s role quite different from any other child in the world, who lives a calm life. Those children go to school in the morning and fall asleep cuddled between their parents at night. Whereas the former goes to their favorite places, only to find them gone, bombed, simply because the occupation has decided to annihilate everything.

It’s 12 midnight, and after a period of water outage in the hospital, everyone cried out when the water came back. One of the children jerked awake and ran to get water. On his way there, he stopped running, fell down, his head hit something sharp, and his blood was spilled on the floor. After an hour, the child found himself lying in a hospital bed with a head-wound. He did not know how he grew up or how he was injured. He could have been snuggling with his mom had the aggressors decided to not disrupt the balance of childhood; yesterday, you could have fallen pursuing your toys, today, you fell pursuing water.

Leen is a girl who just turned six a few days ago. In spite of our presence in the hospital, her parents wanted to make her happy by throwing a small birthday party. She is a displaced child celebrating her birthday within a hospital’s wall, all because the occupation had destroyed her home, stolen her land, and killed her people. Leen is an incredibly imaginative child; she can come up with inimaginable stories. Leen says that Gaza, North of the Strip, is prettier than the South. For her, Gaza is wide and boundless, but the South is tight and narrow, since her tent is narrow and small. In the North, she used to play with her cousins where she had a massive yard, but now, she no longer sees her cousins and only a quite narrow passage surrounds her tent. 

Leen loves noodles, Awwameh and Asabe Zainab - Levantine desserts. She declares her love for raisins by saying that they are so sweet like honey. Leen expresses her anger and upset for not having raisins in the vicinity of the hospital. Leen is only six years old. Yet, she is wiser than her age. She says that her home is bigger than the entire universe, but the South imprisons her, it is as confined and limited as her tent.