Simon_Lucy

I no longer go to the Indonesian hospital. What foolishness it is, to speak of hospitals in a place where life is no longer preserved but merely postponed. Once, I believed, oh, how bitterly I believed, that the presence of a doctor among the dying was a sacred thing, a last stand against the void. But here, where the void has taken residence in the very walls, what can sanctity do? The hospital is surrounded now. Not by men, not by soldiers even, but by machines. Drones, humming above like metallic locusts, devoid of soul or pity. They know neither suffering nor mercy, they are the purest expression of obedience without conscience. They circle the building like vultures circling a carcass not yet dead enough. Two days ago, the ceiling collapsed. A nurse had just spoken the word “hope.” Then came the blast, and the word hung in the air a moment too long before crumbling with the plaster. ICU monitors, those fragile gods of modern faith, shattered on the floor. One machine let out a long, wheezing beep as it died. It was the sound of resignation. I think I wept, but I cannot recall if it was with my eyes or only in my mind. And this morning, yes, this morning, as if dawn itself had become ashamed, a drone struck the intensive care unit. It came like a decision already made. There was no warning, no negotiation, no fate to plead with. Just fire. Patients ran. Doctors ran. The hallway became a river of chaos, but silent, terrifyingly silent. One man dragged his son by the shoulders, blood smearing behind them like a signature of some unseen pact. Another woman collapsed, not from injury but from the sheer weight of choosing which of her children to carry. Two patients were taken away in an ambulance, if that word still means anything. The rest had already passed into that cold stillness we now mistake for peace. We still work at the clinic, though I no longer know if it's from duty or habit, or some grotesque need to perform life while surrounded by death. We whisper. We disinfect. We bind wounds that will open again. The scalpel, once a tool of healing, now feels like an accomplice. At home, the walls speak in cracks. The roof sags under the pressure of memory. The air smells like dust and grief. My mother tapes the broken windows each day with the care of a priest dressing a corpse. My father rations rice with the reverence of a man offering communion. But outside, outside, it never stops. The bombing continues with the faithfulness of a priest at prayer. It does not pause. It does not tire. It beats like a heart possessed by something inhuman. And now, the streets. No, not streets, corridors of exile. Rows of tents like gravestones made of fabric. Children play in the ashes, unaware that they are survivors of a war not yet finished. The army says, Evacuate. To where? They do not say. Only: Leave. Disappear. Unbecome. Famine grows near. But even hunger, with its gnawing cruelty, is familiar. Hunger is intimate. It is ours. What is worse, what is unbearable, is the silence that follows the blast. The silence in which you call a name and no one answers. The silence where meaning once lived. This is not a war. It is annihilation dressed in the costume of procedure. It is a logic without soul, a godless arithmetic of bodies and coordinates. And still, still, some whisper that God watches. I do not know. Sometimes I think He has turned His face away, not out of indifference, but out of shame. But if you are reading this, if your eyes have reached these words like a boat reaching a shore you thought unreachable, then for the love of all things holy and damned: Do not look away. To look away is to become part of it. To forget is to bury us before we are dead. To remain silent is to drive the final nail. #GazaGenocide‌