Dearest Gentle Readers!
It has been a while now. I know. I have been working in the field and have had little time to write…I am back! Hopefully I will regain my consistency. This is a quick one…It is really hot off the press…hot out of my mind…no editing has been done, just a quick proof read….More soon…
Last week, my children went back to school. Grade 7 here we come. Both taller than me now, both tanned from a summer of swimming and playing basketball, they slipped right through my fingers, prepared their own bags and jetted off to a new academic year. I tried to hover. I made pancakes, and asked six hundred and thirty times if they brushed their teeth, and seven hundred times if they have everything. I prayed for them, and hugged them and said short prayers into their ears. And they were gone…. Off into the future, where I am no longer needed as much as used to be…Last week my children were lucky enough to go back to school….
Last week around 630K children did not go to school. They did not rise to grade 7, grade 6 or grade 1 for that matter. Instead one full academic year was obliterated, erased, lost. They did not spend a summer of swimming and playing basketball. Instead, it was a summer of running from one “safe” place to another, only to run again and again. Their skin was not tanned from all the swimming; it was burnt with white phosphorous then their open wounds scorched by the sun. Last week, 630K children did not attend school, because there are no schools left to attend.
This week, I am sitting in a cafe, joining my fellow writers in the London Salon Writing hour, pretending that a genocide is not happening, that in couple of months, we could also be dispalced, dispossessed, no longer running between basketball practices, but running to find safety. I am acutely aware that there is no safe place in Palestine. Not in Gaza and not in the West Bank. This facade of safety that some of us are still lucky enough to live in, is peeling off like old paint in an old buildings. I am afraid that soon enough, our reality will be blown off into the distant while the world watches, because why not? No one has stopped it from happening for the last nine months, why would they stop now?
For now my children are at school, I am preparing for tomorrow’s facilitator training session and planning the next few weeks of work and writing. I am thinking of my next short story…I will continue to push forward until it is time for the mirage to disappear, praying that a divine intervention will safe us all….
Until my next letter….Pray for Palestine, Pray for Humanity…
thank you for the restack
Praying here in New Zealand dear Riyam. Every week we hold a vigil and stand and shout in solidarity. 🤍✊🏾