By Sisu Sugo (Shish Mmm)
Palestine—once a radiant emblem of human glory. Towers of glass stretched toward the heavens, rooftop gardens burst with blossoms, and magnetic trams glided through streets that gleamed like polished dreams. Now, it is a sepulcher of broken hopes.The sky, no longer a canvas of blue, is scarred with ash and ember. Where homes once stood, firelight weaves a mournful dance. A charred schoolbag leans against a blackened wall, its zipper half-undone, revealing a notebook etched with trembling Arabic:“One day, I will be a doctor. I will banish Abu’s pain forever…”Beside it kneels Zainab, a young girl, her fingers grazing the notebook as though it still pulses with the warmth of a classroom lost to time.
A Procession of Shrouded Spirits
In the city’s wounded heart stand thousands of Gaza’s children—boys and girls, some barely steady on their feet, others bearing burdens heavier than their tender years. Coated in dust, draped in white kafan—the shroud of the departed—they shimmer faintly, like moonlight piercing a veil of mist.Their laughter rises, not in jest but in rebellion. They laugh not to erase their sorrow, but because sorrow has failed to still their voices.Zainab cradles her younger brother Hamza, his body limp, his eyes sealed in eternal rest. She whispers,“Sleep a little longer, Hamza. The drones are silent today.”But Hamza no longer draws breath. He hasn’t for days. Yet Zainab clings to him, defying the dust’s quiet hunger to claim him.
The Tongue of the Divine
A sudden blaze of light rends the smoke-heavy sky—not thunder, not flame, but a radiance pure and piercing.Jibreel (Gabriel) descends, his wings vast as unfurling galaxies, shimmering with celestial grief. His gaze, woven of mercy and anguish, seems to murmur,“Even in paradise, we weep for you.”He moves among them in silence, reading the unspoken tales in each child’s eyes:A doll, its arms torn away.A mother’s scream swallowed by a collapsing roof.A half-eaten biscuit in a lunchbox never opened.Beside him glides Azrael, the Angel of Death, robed in twilight’s gentle hues. He is not a specter to fear but a quiet comforter. The children reach for him, not to flee, but to rest in his embrace.A boy, voice trembling, asks,“Can you bring my Ummi back?”Azrael offers no words, only a touch upon the boy’s brow, filling the hollow of loss with a warmth no mortal tongue could name.
Dancing with Ashes and Memory
A girl kneels, her finger tracing shapes in the ash—a village, a shop, her mother weaving braids into her hair.A boy bounds forward, his laughter a fragile spark,“Today was my birthday, but no one knows!”He scrawls 9th June in soot across his tattered shroud.They play amidst the skeletons of towers, beside the ghosts of dreams.They do not mourn as the living do. They hold fast to memory.
The Final Flame and the Soft Ascent
The earth shudders as another missile strikes, sending tremors through the ruins. Yet the children stand unshaken, their spirits anchored in defiance.Jibreel raises his hands in wordless prayer, his wings unfolding like a golden shroud, casting a glow that cradles the wreckage, as if lulling the city into sacred slumber.Azrael touches each child’s forehead, one by one. With every touch, they smile, rising weightless as dandelion seeds, dissolving into the light like embers carried skyward.When the last child fades, only empty shrouds flutter in the breeze.A scorched toy lies alone amid the rubble.Beside it, carved into the stone, are words that pierce the heart:“They will play no more. But they have not been vanquished.”
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The End.
