Beneath the Broken Sky

The sun rose over Gaza that morning like it always did—soft, hesitant, and blood-orange against the horizon. But beneath that sky, a child named Amina crouched in the corner of a collapsed building, her small fingers clutching a dirty cloth to muffle her brother’s cries.

Amina was only eleven, but war had aged her eyes. Once filled with curiosity and the sparkle of childhood, they now reflected the smoke-stained ruins of a city that no longer recognized itself.

It had been three weeks since the last ceasefire was shattered by the thunder of bombs and the howl of fighter jets overhead. In that time, her neighborhood of Shuja'iyya had become a graveyard of concrete, twisted metal, and unanswered prayers. The streets where she had once skipped rope with her cousins were now rivers of dust and blood.

Her parents had been alive when the bombing started. Her mother had kissed her forehead the night before, whispering hope into her ear: "Tomorrow will be better, habibti." But tomorrow brought a missile, and Amina never saw her again.

There were no funerals. No mourning rituals. Just the hurried scraping of hands in rubble, the quiet sobs of fathers digging for daughters, and the sickening silence when nothing could be found.

She and her younger brother, Adam—barely five—had found shelter beneath the shell of what once was a bakery. It still smelled faintly of flour and warmth, ghosts of normalcy haunting its crumbling walls. A young medic named Samir, no older than sixteen, brought them water when he could. Food was rare. Hope, rarer.

Outside, the world debated. Leaders spoke of “self-defense” and “restraint,” while screens flickered with images too sanitized to feel real. But Gaza did not need more debates. It needed breath. It needed life. It needed the world to remember that its children were not statistics.

Amina had stopped crying days ago. She learned quickly that tears wasted water. She had one job now—keep Adam alive. She sang to him at night, soft songs their mother used to hum as she kneaded dough. Her voice cracked with thirst, but Adam smiled when she sang. That was enough.

One day, Samir didn’t come.

She waited. Morning passed. Then night. The city trembled with distant shelling, and the sky wept sparks.

It wasn’t until the fourth day that she learned what had happened—an airstrike had hit the clinic where he volunteered. There were no survivors. Not even the bandages.

Amina didn’t cry. She simply took Adam’s hand and stepped into the street.

The sun was setting again, golden light glinting off broken glass and burnt rebar. The warplanes were quieter now, circling farther north. A brief pause, perhaps. Or just another trick of time.

As they walked, Amina saw familiar faces—some alive, most on murals painted across the ruins. Children with balloons, smiling mothers, grandfathers holding keys to homes that no longer existed. Martyrs, they called them. But she didn’t want to be a martyr. She just wanted a morning without explosions. A night without nightmares. A chance to grow.

In the middle of the rubble, she stopped. There, half-buried beneath a slab of concrete, was a doll. Its fabric torn, its eyes scratched. She picked it up, brushing off the ash.

Adam reached for it.

She gave it to him.

That night, under the fractured remains of Gaza’s sky, they curled together—two tiny souls amid the silence of a world that had forgotten them. Amina whispered one more song.

Not for comfort.

Not for hope.

But to remind the stars above: We are still here.

And as bombs fell once more in the distance, Gaza wept with them. A land not of terror, but of tragedy. Not of violence, but of victims. A land screaming not for revenge—but for recognition.

And the sky, broken and bruised, held them gently. For even in genocide, children dream.

Thank You