I Love You Palestine

“Mummy! Mummy! The ground is shaking, the world is ending, don’t let the world end mummy, please don’t let it end!”

“Come here my baby boy, I will keep you safe. It will stop soon, it is the Jews again, flying their jets low to upset us. I know the ground is shaking, I know your head is splitting, I know we haven’t slept in a year, but we will be able to sleep again soon my son. The world will not end. Not tonight.”

“Promise me Mummy. Promise me” the four-year old boy cried, shaking in sympathy with the house that was shaking off dust in the midst of the sonic boom.

“I promise son. I promise.”

The shaking stopped after a minute. The boy continued to tremble, terrified, sullen-eyed and delirious through lack of sleep. His features gaunt, he had not had any fresh water to bathe in for days, and the drinking water had to be brought in from miles away every day, because the Jews had destroyed Gaza’s only water pumping station and shattered the infrastructure to deliver it, putting medieval Gaza back into the Stone ages.

“Mummy, what if they hurt you, like when the Jews shot Baba and now he can never walk again?”

Mother was fighting back the tears now. She had been using dust for ablutions, because there was no water, and the dust was in her eyes, and she had no tears in her ducts left to cry.

“Son, they won’t shoot me, I promise. And Baba is at least still alive”

“But sister isn’t Mummy, they shot her in the back of the head Mummy, I heard you say that her face was gone Mummy, I still see her broken face in my dreams Mummy, why did they shoot her Mummy?”

“Because the Jews hate us son. They hate us. They are scared of us”

“But Mummy, I am scared of them. Baba can’t walk, sister is dead and we have no water and no food and we can’t sleep, what can we do to them Mummy, what can we do?”

“Nothing son, we can do nothing, but pray. They fear us because they took our land and they want us to go away, but we won’t go away, because this was our home before they were ever here and they are afraid we want to stay. And they are afraid that one day the world will wake up from its sleep and catch the thief that stole our land and our children and our lives and our livelihood and our sisters and brothers and fathers and mothers and punish that evil thief”

“Mummy, sister was only 11, why were the Jews afraid of her Mummy?”

“I don’t know son. They said that she ran where she was supposed to walk”

“Is that wrong Mummy? Should I stop running?”

“No my son. It’s not wrong to run”

“Mummy, do they kill children by taking their faces away with guns in other countries?”

“No my son. Only in our country.”

“Why don’t we leave Mummy?”

“We can’t leave my son. This is our home. This is our land. It belongs to us, not to them. And they will try to kill us all, but one day, somebody will help us. Somebody will catch the thief. And then we will be free again”