Palestine & Gaza

Gaza – October 2023

The sky was blue, cloudless, and innocent. Just like the children playing beneath it. Among them was Amira, a 9-year-old girl with curious eyes and worn-out pink shoes. Her laughter echoed in the broken alleyways, chasing after a red ball with her younger brother, Zayd, barely six.

Their school had been bombed a week ago. Now the playground was a rubble-strewn field beside a collapsed bakery. But to them, it was still a playground.

“Mama says we’ll go back to class soon,” Zayd said, kicking the ball.

Amira smiled, though she wasn’t sure. She had heard the grown-ups whisper about something worse coming. She had seen Mama cry in silence. But she never told Zayd. He still believed in peace.

That night.

Amira sat on the rooftop, sketching stars with her finger in the sky. Her father, Hassan, sat beside her, smoking a cigarette and staring into the blackness.

“Baba, why do planes come at night?” she asked.

“To scare us,” he said softly, “because monsters never come in daylight.”

She didn’t fully understand. But she remembered the shadows that flew overhead. The sounds of thunder with no rain. The smell of fire that stayed in her hair for days.

October 17 – 2:21 AM

A flash.

Then a scream.

Then silence.

The missile struck three houses down. The blast shook everything. Amira woke to the ceiling cracking, to her mother dragging her and Zayd under the table, to Hassan yelling from outside.

The next explosion was closer.

Dust. Darkness. Blood.

When Amira opened her eyes, she was lying under pieces of the wall. Her ears rang like bells, her hands were trembling, and Zayd—Zayd was quiet.

She crawled toward him.

He wasn’t moving.

His eyes were open. But he wasn’t there.

“ZAYD!” she screamed.

Her voice tore the silence.

Her mother rushed to her, sobbing. Her father didn’t come. He never would. He had gone out to help a neighbor. His body was found hours later—unrecognizable, burned.

The next morning.

The news showed numbers: “43 dead, including 27 children.”

The headlines used words like “conflict” and “retaliation.”

But Amira knew what it really was.

Murder.

Zayd was not a fighter. He had no gun. His weapon was his red ball. His dream was to become a bus driver.

And now, he was a name on a list.

Three days later.

A photo of Zayd lying in his sister’s arms made global headlines. His little hand resting on her lap. Her eyes wide with horror. That image went viral—shared, reposted, debated.

People cried.

Others scrolled past.

Some argued politics.

Few remembered his name.

But Amira remembered everything.

One month later.

Amira stood beside a pile of bricks that used to be their home. She held her brother’s red ball in her hands.

A foreign journalist approached her.

"Do you hate the ones who did this?" he asked.

She looked up at him. Her eyes were not angry.

“No,” she said. “But I want them to know we were alive.”

Today.

The war still rages.

The headlines fade.

New tragedies push old ones down the timeline.

But somewhere, in a room full of candles and faded photos, a girl clutches a red ball. And when she dreams, it’s always the same:

Her brother laughing.

The blue sky above.

The sound of children playing…

Before the world broke.

The End.