A little boy in Gaza + me
There is a nine-year-old boy in Gaza. He is lying under an upturned bath in the basement of a destroyed tower block. He is with his sister. She is letting him have a shot of their last mobile phone. He doesn’t have the privilege of a scroll. He searches for exactly what he wants to see. “Are you still watching us?” He sees flags on his screen, thousands of them. He knows his own flag, and he knows the green white, and orange. He saw the tricolor fall as a building collapsed yesterday.
At 9 he knows who the black and tans were and he knows Bobby Sands. He doesn’t know what happened in Warrington. He knows the handles for all the Palestinian solidarity groups, so he can get to their pages before the phone crashes. He loves to see his flag fill the screen. He watches videos of the marches from around the world.
When he sees the people marching, he feels like they are walking towards him. He wells up. It gives him hope. I think of him often in my late-night scroll, I read the images and the messages through his eyes I wonder what would he think of what I am seeing. I wonder if there is anything I could post that would help him. Why are they doing this? He asks his sister, who is much older, for the hundredth time. They are doing this because they hate us, she says now, pure and simple, exasperated, terrified. Drink some water she says. He tells her the people from Ireland are walking towards us because they understand and they are free. Last summer, he watched his friends throw stones at the soldiers. This summer, he was planning to throw one himself. Parallel to all of this, an Israeli settler family are looking at the exact location where this exchange between the sister and the boy is taking place on an iPad.
Its a marketing brochure from an Israeli settler construction company, who are promising to build new homes here by next summer, when the boy had plans to throw his first stone at a soldier. The sister scoffs. They understand? Can you hear that drone? The Israeli’s are killing us with the most precise, most modern technology available to them. They have precision, force, metal and the Irish are fighting them with the same banners and placards used to fight Vietnam? Walking up and down their peaceful streets. Ask them whats going on in Ukraine these days? Or did they ever solve their housing crisis? Or why the Israeli Embassy still sits on the Shelbourne Road? The boy replies, they burned down the British Embassy after 13 innocent people were killed on Bloody Sunday. I know they did, says the sister, who is rolling cigarettes as thin as tooth picks and trying to just chill for a min.
I toss and turn thinking about him, and what I could put on social media that would be meaningful for him. I’m haunted by a voice that says that anything I contribute pails in comparison, and another that shames me for writing nothing at all. I’m a writer. One night when I look for him he’ll be dead. Why…. the little boy murmurs in his sleep. They hate us, whispers the sister as she kisses his head. She wants him to know the truth. In his dreams, though, he is hopeful. He sees us coming for him, marching towards him, all the way across Europe, he imagines us getting on and off boats, buses, trains, marching towards him all the same. The next day the sun rises again on Gaza, only because Israel doesn’t have the power to shut it off. The boy and his sister go to try get some water and food. Are we terrorists, like the IRA? He asks her. This is an important question she decides, and she considers her answer.
There are no terrorists, it's a made-up thing. There is only violence and peace. Violent people invented terrorism to stigmatize other violent people, the word terror is a weapon of war itself. All violence harms civilians. Israel is using violence, your friends in Ireland march because they can choose peace. Just two different energies, I think. It’s violence that ends wars though, the sister says. Say Anything, the little boy screams at me in my dreams. Say something. Quick. Everyone has a part to play. He says, his older brother had that quote on his wall before he died. I dare to imagine to inspire action. I complicate the narrative to encourage courage. I see people marching towards him from all over the world. I see missiles getting to him faster. I pray for him. Hail and Blessed. Be the hour and the moment. If the whole world has to think about a small boy this Christmas, I imagine its him.
I see the little boy welcomed into cribs on mantlepieces, in all our homes. I see the strategists back down and meditate. I see the leverage somewhere coming out of the drawer. I see the boy and a soldier giving a talk in a school, about the conflict. I see Air Force One on the Tarmac. I see someone making a huge sacrifice. I see an idea for brokerage, for compromise enter the heart of someone blue and white as they wash their face.
I see a single bullet. What do you see? He sees himself throwing a stone at a soldier in the summer. His sister sees herself reunited with her boyfriend. She takes his hand and places it on the first patch of earth she sees. This is whats most important. We have a right to this, this is our home. Its England that's occupying Ireland, he says, Exactly. She says, and they walk out of shot.
