Is it a life?
Where you see children walking
with bags double their own bodies’ weight,
carrying what’s left of food, clothes
as they set off to return home.
But their legs can never take them there,
for now home only exists in their memories.
Is it a childhood?
Where children strive to bury their beloved ones ?
Instead of choosing dolls to play with
they choose where to lay parents and siblings to rest.
Is it home?
When person dies to bring flour
Is it death
when souls leave their bodies?
I see living bodies without souls.
What do you call that?
Is it normal?
Continuous trauma,
warped sense of belonging,.
unyielding threats to your stability.
Petrified to stay, not ready to leave.
Is it a choice?
Your future or your family?
We need new definitions.
To identify what Palestinians face
The genocide in Gaza rewrote the dictionary.
Tala Albanna
Tala Albanna was born and raised in Gaza. She is a law student, a writer, and an activist in the human rights and environmental fields. She has a strong passion to discover more about the world of animals and nature. She likes to read and she also embroiders (tatreez) in her free time as a way to bond with her ancestral home in Jaffa. She recently received a scholarship to study in the United States.
Cover Photo: Tala Albanna
Donate to a fund for Tala and her family here: https://gofund.me/4f39b99e
Thank you and Michelle for your extraodinary testimony that peace comes through the people – more than through goverments.
My oldest friend is a German, I am French.
We have been exchanging letters for 35 years now, starting 1980, and talked about politics a lot.
Our grand-fathers fought during WW2 and our peoples hated each other at the time.
Now, the French admire Germans and love them, and likewise.
Getting people to know each other through city-twinnings is how this was made possible: each little town in France is twin with a town of its size in Germany, and exchanges have beeen organized.
I admire your strength, your ability to overcome the general thinking, and your courage to be so outspoken. Stay blessed
Anne Carlet-Arnera