Deir Al-Balah shore, central Gaza Strip, April 3, 2026. Photo: Ahmed Dremly

If I had the choice,
would I wake up somewhere
untouched by grief,
where the sky is only sky
and not a warning —

where life doesn’t arrive
wearing the face of loss,
where goodbye is not rehearsed like prayer,
and mothers do not tuck away each child’s
every laugh and smile and glance,
as if preparing for their absence —

where children sleep through the night
without learning the grammar of drones
before they learn the names of rain?

You ask me
if I would choose another life
far from all this weight of agony.

Maybe I would wake lighter.
Maybe my heart would not carry
so much rubble.
Maybe memory would be a garden
instead of scattered ash.

But still —

I would choose Gaza.

I would choose her cracked streets
that recognize my footsteps,
the sea waves that whisper of
our longing to every border.

I would choose the call to prayer
weaving through broken minarets,
the smell of bread at dawn,
and old men lifting their shutters
as if nothing had been destroyed.

I would choose the laughter that survives,
the way we speak without words,
with eyes that have learned too much.

Because Gaza is not only pain.
She is what remains of me
when everything else is taken,

every laugh that refused to die,
every hand that shared its last bread
and still said: forgive me, it is not enough.

How could I leave what built me
and still call myself whole?

So if you ask again —

if I were given another life,
another country, another fate—

my soul would still walk barefoot
toward Gaza.

Again.
Again.
Again.