16/06/2026
The story of so many Gazan children, whose lives and traumas will never heal…. 💔
https://www.facebook.com/share/1CwhiJP8bb/?mibextid=wwXIfr
On the road from Gaza to Khan Younis, a little girl named Sama sat next to me. 💔
She was in her mother’s lap, pointing her tiny hand toward the window. I understood she wanted to see the sea, so I rolled down the glass and pulled her into my lap. A smile broke across her face, as if she had just remembered that life could take another form.
I said to her with a chuckle:
"I'm sorry, sweetie... I swear I didn't notice you'd been gesturing to me for so long. Why didn't you call out to me, sweetie?"
Her mother replied:
"She used to talk so much. But ever since what happened to her two years ago, she stopped speaking entirely. She only uses gestures."
I fell silent for a moment. Inside me arose a familiar, lingering curiosity—a trait I despise yet can never seem to suppress: the urge to ask.
So, I asked. And immediately, I realized I had committed the sin of curiosity once again.
This was the answer to my question about why the little girl had gone silent... and how I wish I had never asked.
On the seventh of December 2023, they were trapped inside the Muscat School on Yaffa Street—300 civilians waiting to be "evacuated."
The soldiers ordered the men out first. They deceived them, executing four of them right before the eyes of their wives and children. Sama’s father was one of them.
Half an hour later, her older sister went out to try and pull her father’s body away. They shot her. She bled on the ground for nine continuous hours, surviving only by the grace of God.
The occupation army then ordered the women to displace toward the west of the city after arresting the remaining men—the first of whom was Sama's oldest brother.
Along the way, the mother discovered that her daughter, Sama, was not with them. That single moment of realization is enough to age a soul by a lifetime.
For three days, she kept returning to the school, which had been turned into a military outpost, begging the soldiers to let her search.
On the third day, she was finally allowed in.
She searched through the rubble of homes, blackened walls, torn little backpacks, and among the voices that had been extinguished. Finally, she found her. Sama was sitting beneath a wall in soiled clothes, staring into a void—having spent three days there without food or water.
That child was Sama. Since that day, not a single word has left her mouth. She hasn't cried, she hasn't screamed, she hasn't spoken. She only points to request something, taps her plate when she wants to eat, and taps her cup when she wants to drink.
I looked at Sama as she smiled at the sea. I wanted to say something, anything, but it was useless. Just hearing the story made me lose my own voice, Sama.
How do you comfort a child who has gone through all of this? A child who lost her voice, her father, saw her sister wounded, and had her childhood stolen away.
I cursed my curiosity, and I cursed this wretched world that smiles in the faces of killers—the world that decorates its screens with talk of "peace."
This genocide has not ended, it will never end, it will never leave us, and we will never forget our pain—even if the entire earth bloomed in apology to Sama and the people of Gaza. 💔
