i saw a little girl recite a poem last night and i want you to read it.
i like your scarf, our people wear it too.
you can't wear it because of consequences.
i will wear it for you.
i like your flag
our people raise it too.
you can't raise it because of consequences.
i will raise it for you.
and i like your resilience, our people are resilient too
your burden is heavy
i will carry it for you.
your people are my people
your scarf is my scarf
your flag is my flag
your struggle is my struggle
your burden is heavy
i will carry it for you
She finished, everyone cheered, and I couldn't speak.
Because she's right about the weight.
There are boys in Gaza carrying water two miles because there's nobody left who can lift it. Doing it twice a day. Setting the container down every few hundred metres to change hands, then picking it up again.
Carrying their sisters on one hip from morning until night, because their mother is queueing somewhere and someone has to hold the baby.
Carrying the family's papers in a plastic bag against their chest, because they're the one who won't lose them.
Carrying the tent, when the order comes to move again. Rolled up, on a shoulder, walking.
And there are boys who have carried their mother out of a tent in pieces. Who knelt in the sand and gathered what they could recognise, and wrapped it, and found out how little she weighed. Who went back the next morning, to the same patch of ground, and looked for more of her because they couldn't stand the thought of leaving any part of her out in the open.
Nine years old. Ten. Twelve.
That's the burden she's offering to take.
And it isn't two years old.
It's decades. Grandmothers who were girls when it started, who are now being moved for the fourth time in their lives. Mothers who inherited it from them. Children carrying exactly what their parents carried, who will hand it to their own children if they live long enough to have any.
Nobody in that line has ever been allowed to set it down. Not for a year. Not for an afternoon. They have never known what it is to stand up straight.
And in all that time, nobody has ever come to take a corner of it.
That's what she's talking about. Not pity. Weight. Actual weight, on actual shoulders, and hands that have been holding it so long they've forgotten the shape of anything else.
i will carry it for you.
She can't. She's nine years old and she has nothing. No money, no power over anything.
She offered anyway.
We have everything she was wishing for. Every single thing. And we've spent two years explaining to ourselves why there's nothing we can do.
So we carry it.
Not as a feeling. As a thing we do, again and again, without being thanked and without it being over. For people who have never once been permitted to stop.
She said it first.
your people are my people.
Now us.
With her words in my mouth,
Hafsa