Chapter 4 - The girl who died twice

Her name was "Leen." She was only seven years old. But when I looked into her eyes, I felt a lifetime of sadness dwell within her. Before the war, she used to come to school every day, carrying her small bag, and laughing at everything. A light laugh like a breeze in a Gaza morning. On the day our neighborhood was bombed, I found her with torn clothes, walking on shards of glass without shoes. She shouted at me, "Where is my mother?!" I didn't know what to say, how to tell her that her mother was the last person to hold her before she was buried under the rubble. Leen died that day... she died as a child searching for her mother's breast, finding nothing but screaming and smoke. But then she came back to life. In the tent, she was silent the entire time, sitting in the corner, not playing with the children, not laughing, not eating. It was as if she had transformed into something else... neither a child, nor a shadow of a human. She died twice... once when her house was bombed, and once when the world tried to forget. They would come with their cameras to film her, and then leave. But they didn't leave her milk, a doll, or even a kind word. Once she told me, "I just want to sleep in my mother's arms... just a little." Every time she called out in her sleep, "Mama! Mama!" she would stab us a thousand times. Once she drew a picture of a house, a tree, and two people on a piece of paper. I asked her who they were. She said, "Mama and I... in heaven." On a harsh winter morning, we found her small body frozen in the tent. She hadn't died from shelling this time, but from hunger and cold. She found no blanket. She found no embrace. She found no justice. And she died a second time. We grieved not only because she died, but because the world didn't pay attention to her. She died screaming, "I'm not a terrorist... I'm a child!" And here we are, every time we remember her name, we die a little. Leen wasn't just one story. She was thousands of stories. Thousands of children born under shelling, lived in hunger, and died in silence. But she will remain within us... and she will tell us every night that childhood in Gaza is buried before it matures.