In Every Life
In honour of the children murdered by israel in the 2021 attack on Gaza and all those taken from us in the years of genocide since.
إنا لله وإنا إليه راجعون
17
Rawan, Khaled, Mohammed, Obaida, Mohammed, Mohammed, Bashshar, Fawzyeh, Mohammed
My people are hopeful
Carrying the keys to doors left ajar
We will need them when we return
16
Ibrahim, Tawfeeq, Rashid, Islam, Said, Lina, Muhammed
You remind us of what we are fighting for,
Not what we fight against.
That for each story cut short, ten more are written
And in the same way that I was chosen to love you,
I was chosen to lose you
So that I might speak of the truth you left behind.
15
Dima, Ahmed, Mahmoud, Mohammed
My people are rooted
In the Fall, we harvest Olives and dates.
In the Winter, Strawberries, oranges, lemons, and thyme
In the Spring, Almonds and watermelon
All year long, we bury our dead
14
Hala, Lina, Yahya, Hana
Before anything, we are children.
Future troublemakers, problem-solvers,
Advocates and visionaries.
13
Yousef, Hamada, Suheib, Ahmed, Yazin, Hala, Doaa
Before anything, we must learn
To love fiercely,
And grieve deeply,
And pray for a liberation without prerequisites or conditions.
So that we might walk on the beach,
And slice an orange,
And take a hot shower.
And grow old,
And die before our children do.
12
Tala, Hamza, Meera, Abdallah
My people are strong
Digging through rubble with bare hands
Unearthing fragments of a shattered past
They say they stand in solidarity with the children they slaughtered
but never the living
11
Rafeef, Yusef, Ibrahim
You were their eyes and ears.
My heart and soul,
Telling the stories that are woven into the tatreez of our grandmothers’ thobes
and grow in the roots of our olive trees.
10
Ammer, Yahya, Rahaff, Dima
My people are proud
Grounded and principled,
We would choose this life in every lifetime
Dancing not to teach lessons in pacificity
Our smiles are not to relieve your discomfort
9
Bilal, Ameer, Yara, Dana,
When it was all over,
We could have sat together on my balcony
drinking mint tea.
And you could have told me
That my love had met you
Even when my hands and words had not.
8
Maryam, Abdulrahman, Zeeyad, Hussein, Islam, Yehya, Zain
In our homeland,
Every person is a storyteller.
And every grain of sand is a witness.
In our homeland,
to speak the truth you must face it directly,
Be with it,
And not let go.
7
Ismail
At night, when it feels too hard to bear,
I go back to the land.
To the place where we grew,
Where you lived.
And I wait.
6
Aymen, Osama, Rula, Amira, Marwan, Adam, Buthaina,
Do you remember
How the sea carried warnings
We dared not say aloud,
And lifted them to places we might never reach?
Do you remember,
How you taught me to tie hope like the string of a kite,
Even when the winds were still?
5
Amir, Zaed
My people are eternal
Never begging for sympathy from a cruel world, we rise and resist.
I will miss the sunsets over the cities I couldn’t rebuild.
4
Baraa
What part of his humanity was hardest for you to hold?
Was it his grief?
His rage?
His power?
3
Adam, Mohammad, Mariam, Mouna
And while this world forgets us,
We will etch our names into the limestone cliffs
And the soft bark of our olive trees.
We will scatter our stories like wildflowers,
beyond checkpoints and barbed wire
To the places we cannot follow.
2
Yazan, Hoor,
She’s running. First it’s the slapping of her shoes.
Then the thumping of boots
The first shot is so loud my hands fly up to keep my head from splitting in two.
1 Year
Mohammad, Qusai, Ibrahim, Mohammed, Hoor
My people are patient
They said the old would die and the young would forget
But the land remembers for us.
This article originally appeared in Volume 46, Issue 2, published September 16, 2025.
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