Aseel

November 8, 2025

We carry our homeland in our eyes, even as we walk away from the cities that once held us. Every street we left behind still whispers our names, and every house still echoes with the voices we could not take with us.

We did not leave because we wanted to. We were forced to leave. Pushed away from our own doorsteps, from our quiet mornings, from dreams that were growing gently inside us.

We did not abandon our homeland, we are still within it. But we became displaced inside its borders, moving through its wounds, searching for a place where the heart could breathe without fear, only to find that no corner felt safe, and every space we turned to seemed empty.

In this departure we did not choose, we carried nothing but trembling bodies and heavy memory. We left keys hanging on doors, photographs waiting on walls, school notebooks open on lessons that never finished, and dreams frozen in the middle of their story.

And as we left these pieces of our lives behind, home after home fell, and the streets that once knew our laughter became narrow corridors for escape. The silence of the abandoned streets pressed down on us, reminding us of what had been lost.

The camps we were told were temporary became lasting places, weighed down by time. Our bodies found shelter there, but our hearts remained at the door of the first home… knocking, though no one answers.

And with this constant displacement, one companion stayed with us: fear. It slips into the smallest moments, in bread lines, in the quiet hours before dawn. It rides the sound of aircraft, it lives in the silence where a familiar voice once was.

And yet, despite everything, we continue. We lift one another when we fall, holding on to the light that still shines within us, and to the whisper that says: we will endure, we will continue, no matter what.

What we ask for is simple — painfully simple: A roof that does not collapse, a door that is not shattered, and a child who can sleep without knowing fear.

We are not numbers, we are not headlines, we are not a story told today and forgotten tomorrow. And we simply want to live — just live — in peace, in dignity, in the homeland we loved, and still love, despite everything.

October 24, 2025

I was walking down a street that had once been full of life—shops open, children laughing, neighbors chatting. Now, it was a graveyard of rubble and dust. The air was thick with smoke, stinging my eyes and filling my lungs with the taste of fire and fear. Every step stirred memories of what this place had been, and the contrast was unbearable.

Then I saw them. Children. Some missing an arm, some missing a leg, some missing both, yet their small bodies moved through the debris with a courage that seemed almost impossible. Their eyes—wide, searching—asked questions no child should ever have to ask: Why me? Why here? Will anyone see me?

A boy sat on the curb, rolling a broken toy car over the cracks. His laugh was fragile, sharp, yet it was still laughter. Nearby, a girl balanced on a fallen beam, her small feet gripping the splintered wood as if sheer will could hold the world together. The wind whispered through the shattered buildings, carrying tiny sounds: a bird fluttering, a child’s laugh, a dog’s bark—reminders that life insists on persisting.

Amid all this destruction, a heavy weight pressed on my chest—anger, helplessness, and sorrow all at once. How could the world go on as if nothing had happened while the lives of these children were unraveling? Here, innocence had been stolen, replaced by nightmares, and screams had become the language of survival.

I sat beside a boy who tried to smile at me. I couldn’t return a real smile. Tears welled in my eyes as I realized words could never reach the horrors his soul had witnessed. All I could do was place my hand gently on his shoulder and whisper, “You are not alone.”

Nearby, a little girl sat on the edge of a shattered doorway, clutching a twisted piece of metal as if it were a toy. Our eyes met for a moment, and in her gaze, I saw an entire world of stories—a world torn apart before it even began.

And yet, even here, life refused to surrender completely. Hands reached for each other. Children shared scraps of food, comforted one another, whispered small jokes that were almost like songs. The smallest gestures of care emerged from the chaos, fragile sparks of humanity in a world determined to erase it.

I walked on, carrying their faces in my mind, their courage in my soul. Even if the world looked away, I promised myself I would not. Every life, even the smallest, every cry, even the quietest, mattered. Their stories demanded to be remembered. Their laughter, their tears, their survival—proof that even in the darkest ruins, life insists on being seen, felt, and honored.

References

Joy

September 18, 2025 "By My Pen"

Untiled - reconstruction

In every conference, they speak of reconstruction --
the rebuilding of this sorrowful land.
They discuss collecting the rubble and ashes,
recycling them un one of the nations.

Excuse my ignorance,
but who will host rubble mixed with blood
and the bones of decomposing corpses?

The corpses of innocent people
who were killed and denied rescue?

Pardon me again,
but the same countries now willing to host debris
filled with the remains of children and women --
are they not the very ones
who refused to host them while they were alive?

Will these countries
be able to bear what will haunt their sleepless nights
and torment their dead conscience?

Honestly, excuse my ignorance,
my questions, and nothing more.

But do not excuse my hunger
and fear beneath the bombs.

And do no excuse
my slow
death.