we are not numbers

emerging writers from Palestine tell their stories and advocate for their human rights

Boy crying in front of flag of Palestine and the word "Ceasefire."

Don’t ask me my age

How old are you? In times of war / A five-year-old child is not five anymore.

 

Boy crying in front of flag of Palestine and the word "Ceasefire."
Artist: @atuomala, flyers_for_faliastin

How old are you? In times of war
A five-year-old child is not five anymore.
He has lived ninety years in the span of four.
So please, don’t ask my age, I implore.

Sadness, pain, agony and more,
Are these words enough to describe the core?
Rubble of homes that can barely store
Our shattered dreams, the things we adore.

Is this the life our parents foresaw —
Homelessness, massacres, starvation, gore?
Through endless nights, darker than before,
We navigate what we abhore.

Try to understand and don’t explore.
Leave the question of age behind a closed door.
One year old, twenty, or seventy-four,
Does it matter beneath the genocide’s roar?

 

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