Nazira

I swear to you. Before God. Before this wretched century. Before whatever last flicker of humanity may still remain in me, what I saw today was not life. It was the collapse of everything that ever claimed to be sacred. Once, Fridays in Gaza were holy. Not because of tradition, but because they were tender. A father would come home with fish, or perhaps a piece of chicken, and for one hour, we would eat like people. We were poor, but not degraded. We would smile across the table, thank God for a small plate of meat, and feel alive. We felt worthy of breath. Even the poorest among us knew this dignity. They saved all week. They endured hunger not out of habit, but for hope. For that one day. That one meal. That illusion of a normal life. But now? Today is Friday. And I walked through the streets of Gaza, not to celebrate, not even to feed, but to hunt for rice. Rotten rice. Gray grains that stick to your fingers and taste like nothing. Anything. Anything at all to fool the stomach into silence. My brother searched one market. I searched another. We returned with crumbs. We paid with the last coins we had. They ask for gold in exchange for ash. And we pay it, because the children must eat, and because we no longer dare to say what is fair. But I have not come to speak about rice. I have come to confess what I saw. A truck passed by. It was empty. Its floor was covered in a thin layer of flour dust. Just dust. Not bags. Not bread. Only the trace of something that might once have saved a child. And then I saw them. Not rebels. Not criminals. Children. They ran, ran like hunted things, toward that truck. They climbed it with hands that have never held toys. They fell to their knees as if before an altar. And they began to scrape. One had a broken lid. Another, a piece of cardboard. But the rest, the rest used their hands. Their tongues. They licked it. Do you hear me? They licked flour dust from rusted steel. From dirt. From the back of a truck that had already driven away. One boy was laughing. Not because he was happy, but because the body goes mad when it is starving. Another was crying, quietly, like someone who no longer believes anyone is listening. And I stood there. With all my shame. With my hands in my pockets, like a man waiting for a bus. Like I wasn’t watching the end of the world. I wanted to scream. But what scream can reach Heaven, when Heaven itself is deaf? What words can I offer? What words can explain the sound of a child’s tongue scraping against rust for a taste of flour? There are no metaphors left. There is no beauty in this. Only sin. Only crime. And we are all guilty. You. Me. The ones who sent the truck. The ones who sent the planes. And God? If You are watching, then cry with us. And if You are silent, then we are alone in this hell. This is the twenty-first century. But history has not moved forward. It has swallowed its own children and called it progress. I don’t want to write this. I want to unsee it. I want to forget the boy who licked the floor. But I can’t. Because I saw him. Because he is real. Because he is more real than all the words I’ve written. And because if I forget him, then I am no longer human. #GazaGenocide

We no longer have the strength to die for someone else’s ambitions. And that, perhaps, is our last act of dignity. To die for truth is sacred. But to die for slogans, empty and ravenous slogans, is hell with a flag. Two months ago, we ran. But how does one describe the act of running when the ground beneath you no longer believes in your feet? We did not run like men. We fled like remnants, like pages torn from a holy book, scattered in the wind. We carried no possessions. Only memory and fear, which clung to our throats like rusted wire. We left behind walls that once contained laughter. A kettle. A child’s slipper. The dent in the mattress where my father used to lie. We left everything, because everything became nothing. And then we waited. Like beggars of fate, we watched the skies for signs, watched drone footage as if it were divine scripture. And every glimpse of our neighborhood became an act of prayer. Was that a roof? Was that our tree? Is the balcony still there? But two days ago, all that ended. My uncle’s house, adjacent to ours, was bombed into the abyss. There was no fire. No warning. Just silence. And then, dust. He is 56 years old. A builder. He spent thirty years in Israel, raising their towers by day and dreaming of his home by night. He laid bricks. Slowly. Carefully. As if building a house could save a soul. Eight daughters. Eight. Each born into rooms that no longer exist. Two of them came back recently, after their own homes were devoured. With children in their arms and bags that smelled of ash. They returned not to a palace. To a hallway. A roof. A man. A father. Fifteen people lived under that roof. Fifteen souls wrapped in the warmth of something we used to call “home.” And now? Now nothing. Not even rubble. Rubble implies weight. This was absence. A hole in the world. My uncle said something yesterday, something that should have shattered the sky: “If one of my daughters had died, it would have hurt less than losing the home that held them all. To lose one is a wound. But to see them all scattered like this… It is death stretched across the living.” I did not answer him. What could I say? There are no words that respond to a man speaking from inside his own collapse. He is not unique. That is the tragedy. He is one of 1.5 million displaced people. Not victims. No, victims still exist within some moral order. We are relics of a forgotten logic. We are the leftover calculations of a world that prefers us buried, but politely. We don’t want much. We want the smell of our kitchen walls. We want the sound of slippers on tile. We want to rest our heads on our own hunger. But now, hunger is all that’s left. And while we starve and grieve, a delegation sits in Doha, behind glass and air conditioning. They argue. They delay. They refuse. They say the ceasefire “does not meet the aspirations of Gaza.” Do they know what we aspire to? We do not aspire. We beg. We beg for the war to stop. We beg for silence to be silence again, not the silence of the dead, but the silence of peace. We beg for the dignity of boredom. But those who speak for us have never seen what we’ve seen. They wear clean shirts. They eat meat. They sleep in beds. Their children are not sleeping on cement. They speak of resistance. We speak of graveyards. They claim to represent us. We look at the sky and wonder who, if anyone, still hears us. And we are tired. Oh God, not in the body, but in the soul. Tired like Job. Tired like Christ before the cross. So if you will not stop the war, then at least open the gates. Let us wander barefoot into the wilderness, not as rebels or patriots or martyrs, but simply as the tired, those who could not bear another hour of pretending they had a country. We are people. We are fingernails and fever. And we are dying. Not for land. Not for God. Not for Hamas. Not for Israel. Not for your pride. We are dying because no one will let us live. #GazaGenocide