"The War on Gaza: Being Palestinian Is a Curse, Not a Blessing," writes Palestinian doctor and health policy researcher Behzad Al-Akhras in a British Middle East Eye article, where he reflects on three stories depicting the trauma endured by children in Gaza, a phenomenon surpassing the worst nightmares imaginable.
For many of us, the desire to re-experience the world through the eyes of a child with the innate innocence they possess is common. Being a child is considered one of life's greatest blessings, with childhood being the phase where we begin to fall in love with the world. However, this is not true for everyone, and certainly not for the children of Gaza who are burdened under criminal Israeli bombardment.
Little Fatima
Al-Akhras paints a grim picture of a child's experience in today's Gaza under Israeli bombardment. Little Fatima wakes not to the familiar smiles and embraces of her mother and father at home, but rather alone in a hospital corridor, disoriented, frightened, and in shock, with dust covering her little eyes and blood on her cheeks, and excruciating pain from a broken leg.
Fatima wonders what wrong she has committed to live this nightmare. Why didn't her mother wake her? Why isn't her father there to comfort and reassure her as he always does when she is afraid?
She convinces herself, "I know I can be naughty sometimes, but that's no excuse for such a punishment." As time drags on, Fatima slowly begins to recognize her new reality.
Her father is missing under the rubble, her mother lies lifeless and cold in the corridor, and her siblings are either in intensive care, the operating room, or the morgue's refrigerator.
The little girl begins to notice the faces around her. They are humans, but she wonders what befell them to look like specters, with their faces devoid of blood and life.
Meanwhile, she hears an announcement, "Bissan has arrived," referring to her elder sister, who is training to be the family's physician. Fatima looks forward to seeing her beloved sister, who would offer comfort and solace. Yet, the repeated announcement, "Bissan has arrived," refers to a charred corpse.
Ahmad, Fatima's Cousin
In disbelief, Fatima had hoped Bissan arrived to treat her broken body. When reality hits, she begins to cry and scream, filling the world with noise, in a last-ditch attempt to wake from this nightmare that surpasses even her worst imaginings.
A medic begins cleaning Fatima's face, wiping away the dust and blood, while another doctor examines her fractures, and a nurse tries to soothe her amidst the ongoing chaos.
Just hundreds of meters away lies Fatima's cousin, Ahmad, also her age, screaming for help in the pitch dark with no response. Trapped, distressed, and terrified, he is unaware that he is buried under the rubble of a six-story building.
Trying to comfort himself, he hopes his real-life superhero father, who always protected and sheltered him, will find and rescue him. As he waits, he begins to feel the features of the crushed body beneath him, slowly realizing it's his father, who protected him from the blasts and collapse, passing away in the process.
Hanan the Infant
Nearby, eleven-month-old Hanan might be the first baby in the world to experience a free flight from a four-story building. After being on the supposedly safe rooftop with her mother, the echo of bombing explosions launched her into the air, like a paper kite, landing safely in a nearby farm, where she nestled among the branches of a tree, which served as her mother.
Al-Akhras comments that it was a true miracle in times when miracles seem to have faded away. Nevertheless, it was the only miracle that befell the family.
The rest perished in the airstrike, their bodies shattered and buried beneath the rubble, leaving their tiny guardian angel as the only miraculous survivor of what was also a massacre.
The article concludes by asserting that these stories are not fabrications, nightmares, or fictional tales for children, but actual events from a single night in one neighborhood in Gaza. These are the stark realities of life for children in the sector, and readers have the choice to either read them as stories or acknowledge them as the genuine catastrophes they represent.
