Here, in the quiet spaces
between the broken walls,
a pot boils.

Steam rises,
a silent witness to stories
etched in the soil,
in the grooves of old hands
that measure coffee by memory,
not by spoons.

The first pour—bitter,
as the mornings when the sun
casts its shadow
on stolen land.

The second—sweetened by cardamom,
a promise that roots
will not forget,
nor the hands that planted them.

Tea follows,
sage leaves, maramia, unfolding in water,
mint curling at the edges,
like the voices of grandmothers
who welcome strangers
with a cup—
a gesture that transcends words.

Take.
Drink.
Taste the land we cannot touch.

These cups carry the weight
of what cannot be written down:
displacement,
return,
a longing brewed
into every sip.

And when we drink,
we remember.
Not just the land,
but the rhythm of lives
that refuse to leave it.

Tea and coffee,
the quiet resistance
of a people who know
that even in exile,
the first sip
tastes of home.

The War on Lebanon has ended, 

but the echoes of bombs linger, 

and the scars of occupation run deep. 

Endless attacks have marked the land, 

Zionist forces relentless in their push, 

leaving a trail of destruction 

that has shattered lives and dreams. 

Children are the silent victims, 

innocent lives torn apart, 

their laughter silenced by the weight of fear, 

too many lost, too many shattered families. 

In every corner, memories of loss remain, 

homes turned to rubble, futures stolen, 

a generation bearing the burden of grief, 

haunted by the remnants of violence. 

This ceasefire offers no real relief, 

as power dynamics remain unchanged, 

with justice still a distant hope, 

and accountability yet to be seen. 

We stand amid uncertainty, 

between survival and the longing for peace, 

demanding a future where children can thrive, 

where their voices can rise above the rubble. 

The war on Lebanon may have ended, 

but the struggle for freedom and dignity continues,

A call to remember the Martyrs, 

to fight for a world where every child is safe. 

If I were 23 Gaza,
how many wars would I carry in my bones?
2008, they called it Operation Cast Lead,
a name that burned itself into the streets,
into the breath of children
who learned too young what it means
to survive their first war.

If I were 23 in Gaza,
how many times would I have rebuilt
from the ash of 2014, Protective Edge,
where neighbourhoods crumbled,
and the sea carried the cries of children
to a world too deaf to listen?

If I were 23 in Gaza,
how many Friday marches would I remember,
the Great March of Return,
when bullets answered the call for justice,
and smoke smothered the dreams
of land, of dignity, of return?

If I were 23 in Gaza,
how many wars would define my years?
How many times would the world name them,
then forget them?
Would my life be measured in ceasefires
that never held,
in treaties that never came?

If I were 23 in Gaza,
how many lives would I have mourned?
The families of Al-Zaytoun in 2009,
buried together beneath the rubble.
The streets of Khan Yunis,
forever marked by massacres
that no one dared to count.

If I were 23 in Gaza,
how many olive trees would I have planted,
only to see their roots severed by bulldozers?
How many times would I have whispered
to the sea,
asking if it remembers the taste of freedom?

If I were 23 in Gaza,
would my story matter to the world?
Would they see me as a life,
as a human,
or just another number—
just collateral damage?

 They took the earth,
cut through the olive branches,
crushed the soil that bore our roots.
They carved roads into the bones of our homes
and called them theirs.

But the land remembers.
The trees, the mountains,
the rivers that never left us,
even when they said we were gone.

We carry the weight of each step,
each heartbeat that holds the place
we were torn from.

We are the ones who return,
not in the way they expect,
but in every breath that rises
from the soil we’ve never stopped loving.

One day, the walls will crumble,
the borders will blur,
and we will return
not as strangers,
but as the land reborn.

The earth will know us,
as we know it,
And they will remember,
the ones who thought they could erase us.

How many children


do you have to kill


for you to feel safe?

A hundred thousand?


A million?


More?

How many small bodies


must be buried under rubble,


their names never spoken again,


before your fear is quiet?

How many tiny shoes


must be left without feet?


How many toys


must be covered in blood?


How many beds


must be empty forever?

Does it make you feel safe


when the schools are dust?


When the parks are silent?


When the hospitals are graveyards?

How many mothers


must scream into the earth,


digging with their bare hands,


before you can sleep at night?

How many fathers


must carry their sons


wrapped in white cloth,


kissing cold foreheads,


whispering apologies


they should never have to say?

What is the number?

Say it.


Say it out loud.

How many before you stop?


How many before you break?


How many before you look at yourself


and see what you have become?

And when you have counted them all,


when every street is a mass grave,


when every cradle is shattered,


when every memory of them


is turned to ash—

Will you finally feel safe?

Or will their faces haunt you?


Will their names never let you rest?


Will the silence be louder than the bombs?

How many?

How many more?

10,000+ Palestinian hostages.


Not prisoners.


Not detainees.


HOSTAGES.

Stolen from their homes,


from their beds,


from the streets,


from their families.

Children.


Mothers.


Fathers.


Sons.


Daughters.


Names turned into numbers.

Locked in cells,


beaten, tortured,


their screams unheard,


their bodies unseen.

No charges.


No trials.


No justice.

Only chains.

The world looks away.


The world swallows its tongue.


The world counts time—


but not their stolen years.

10,000+ hostages.


And you call it democracy?


You call it law?


You call it justified?

NO.

Call it what it is.


Call it what you would


if it were your own.

Kidnapped.


Imprisoned.


Tortured.


Erased.

But they are not forgotten.


They are not silent.

And neither are we.

FREE THEM.


ALL OF THEM.


NOW.

They say ceasefire—


but listen.


Do you hear silence?


Do you hear peace?


Or do you hear the snipers,


still aiming,


still breaking bodies


that barely learned their own names?

Gaza is still bleeding.


Jenin is under attack.


Two-year-olds fall in the streets,


picked off from a distance,


their lives ended by a finger’s pull.

The West Bank is being carved apart,


villages erased,


families torn from their roots,


their land stolen as the world looks away.


South Lebanon is still burning.


The trees are still screaming,


roots torn from the earth,


like lungs pulled from a chest.


The land is being erased—

and so are its people,

the hands that tended it,

the voices that honoured it.

This was always the plan.

They want you to sigh in relief,


to mistake silence for peace,


to think the slaughter has ended


while the rifles are still raised.

But the same deal sat on their table


fifteen months ago—


and they spit on it.

Now, after half a million dead,


they sign it with the same hands


that steady their aim,


that set the land on fire


and call it peace.

Do not look away.

This is not an end.


This is not a ceasefire.


This is slaughter, slowed to a rhythm


you can stomach.

Look.


Listen.


Remember.

They do not want you to.

My heart is sore.


Not like a bruise.


Not like a wound.


Not like anything I can name.

It burns.

It hurts.

It is splitting open inside me,


ripping through bone,


through muscle,


through everything I am.

I never knew I could feel this much


and still be empty.


So full of fire,

so full of rage,


and yet—


hollow.

I am angry.

Angry in a way that doesn’t fit into words.


Angry at this world,


at the people who watch,


who accept,


who justify,


who explain away the killing of my people


as if our lives are footnotes in their history books.

Angry at the silence.


At the ones who say nothing.


At the ones who see it happening


and shrug.


At the ones who tell me to be reasonable,


to be calm,


to be polite,


while my world is burning.

Do you know what that feels like?

To watch the world decide


that some lives matter


and some don’t?


That your blood is cheaper?


That your grief is inconvenient?


That your anger is too loud,


but your suffering is not loud enough?

It hurts.

More than I can explain.


More than any language can hold.


There are no words for this.


Not in English.


Not in Arabic.


Not in any tongue ever spoken.

What do I do with this pain?

Do I scream until my throat shreds?


Do I sit in a room full of people


and let them pick apart my pain


like an academic debate?


Do I say nothing at all—


just like they want me to?

Will it ever stop?


Will I always feel like this?

I wish I could stop caring.


I wish I could feel less.


I wish I could close my eyes


and let it all become noise,


like so many others do.

But I can’t.


I don’t have that luxury.


I don’t have that privilege.

My body refuses.


My blood remembers.


I am so fucking angry.

And I will not be quiet.

I have never walked its roads,


but they shape the way I move.

I have never breathed its air,


but it fills my lungs.


Carried in stories,


in the scent of oranges I have never picked.

I have never stood in its streets,


but they are mapped in my hands.


Lines of return, lines of longing,


etched deeper with every mile away.

I carry our land in the way I speak,


in the way I grieve,


in the way I refuse to forget.

Palestine is not a place I have lost—


it is a place I hold,


a land that walks with me,


wherever I go.

I was too young to ask.
Too young to know that stories could vanish,
that voices could quiet before I was ready to listen.
I should have sat closer,
should have held his hands longer,
should have asked him—

Jiddo, how did it feel to leave Haifa in 1938,
when it was still yours to return to?
Did you know, on those weekend journeys back,
that one day you would be denied the right to return?
That you would finish your studies,
only to find it too dangerous to go home,
not because the land refused you,
but because they did—
those who built their state on our erasure,
who decided that you, the native,
had no place in your own homeland.

I should have asked—
about the books you carried to AUB,
about the years in England.
I should have asked about the smells of our streets,
the voices of neighbours calling each other by name,
the taste of fruit picked from our trees,
the way the earth felt beneath your feet.

I should have asked about our family’s tobacco fields,
how the leaves felt between your fingers at harvest,
how the scent of the drying crops lingered on your clothes,
how the land provided for us before they tore it away.

I thought there would be time.

Instead, I hold the silence,
trace the exile written in my veins.
I was not born in the land you lost,
but I feel it in the marrow of my bones.
A home I have never seen,
but one that lives in me,
a longing that does not belong to me alone.

They say resilience is survival,
but for us, it is inheritance.
It is knowing that even in exile,
we are never rootless.
It is carrying a history they tried to bury,
lifting it to the light,
refusing to let it die.

I was not there when they took everything,
but still, I rise,

still, I remember,

still, I fight,
because I was born to be resilient.