I was at the gym yesterday.
My trainer picked up my backpack to move it, did that exaggerated thing with his arm — what have you got in here? And I laughed, because it is heavy, and because it's a ridiculous amount of stuff to carry around.
A laptop. The charger. A water bottle I keep filling and never finish. Trainers. A massive book that i’m reading.
That's my weight.
Five minutes later I was on my phone, and there was a boy in Gaza with a backpack on.
Not a school bag anymore. A running bag.
That's what those bags are now. Every family in Gaza has one packed, because the order to leave comes with almost no notice and you take what's on your back. Papers. A change of clothes. Whatever will fit.
He'd been carrying his for two years. From one place to another, and then another, every time they were told to move.
That bag was the reason they kept surviving. You keep it packed, you keep it close, you go when they say go.
And then one day it didn't matter how fast they moved.
The strike found them anyway.
He lived. His family didn't.
And what was left of them was on him. On the bag. On his back. Where he couldn't see it and couldn't reach it.
I keep thinking about where I was standing when I saw that.
A gym. A building people pay to go into so they can lift heavy things on purpose.
That's the whole concept isn’t it? You choose a weight that's hard for you. You lift it. You put it down. You do it again, because it's good for you, and then you go home.
Put it down.
Every heavy thing in my life, I get to put down. The bag goes in a locker. The weights go back on the rack.
He can take the bag off.
He can take the bag off and he still can't put the weight down. Because it isn't in the bag. It's on him. It's on his shoulders and his shirt and his skin, and no one is coming with water or a clean shirt or the words you'd need to say to a child in that moment.
He will wash. Eventually, someone will help him, or he'll do it himself with whatever water there is.
And then he'll have to decide what to do with the bag.
It's the bag that saved them for two years. It's the only thing he owns. And it's the last place his family touched him.
He's a child. He has to work that out by himself.
I don't know what that does to a person. I don't think there's a word for it in any language.
They packed that bag so they could outrun this. They did everything right. They ran every single time they were told to.
It wasn't enough, because it was never going to be enough, because there is nowhere in Gaza to run to.
So no. My bag isn't heavy.
There are children out there carrying things that no human should ever be asked to lift, and they're doing it alone, in a place where help does not arrive on its own.
We can try to take some of it off.
He is wearing everything that happened to him.
The least we can do is not look away while he stands there.
Putting mine down, and picking up something that matters,
Hafsa