I've been on TikTok a lot lately. I know, I’m chronically online but these days it's impossible not to be.
What I keep seeing there is beautiful, honestly. Muslims everywhere planning their Eid outfits. Trying on colourful beautiful clothes from their cultures, spinning in front of mirrors, asking their followers, this one or that one?
The comments full of heart emojis. The excitement real and infectious. Families planning dinners, buying sweets, counting down the days to a celebration they've been waiting the whole month for.
I kept watching. Video after video. And I feel that warmth, that collective joy of a community on the edge of something they've been building toward. There is something so deeply human about it. The way we all want to mark a moment.
The way we dress up and gather and make ordinary days feel like occasions. The way even the smallest things like a new outfit, a bracelet, something that catches the light can make a day feel like it belongs to you.
I was still thinking about that when I saw her.
A girl from Gaza. She was gone. A child wrapped in a white cloth. And sitting on top of that white shroud was a small, delicate gold bracelet. Placed there by someone who loved her, because it was the only way left to celebrate her.
The contrast of it stopped me completely. The brightness of the gold against the white. Because she had been saving up. Setting money aside so she could have something new to wear to celebrate. So she could feel the same joy I had just been watching a hundred other girls feel.
She never got to put it on herself.
I put my phone down. I couldn't keep scrolling. I just sat there with that image. The gold, the white, the smallness of it all and I thought about how she wanted exactly what every child wants. To mark a special day. To feel celebrated. To wake up with something to look forward to.
She had the same excitement in her heart that millions of children around the world have right now. The same countdown. The same small, private hope that this day would feel like something. The difference is she was born in Gaza.
And she is not the only one. Right now, while the world spins in front of mirrors and plans tables full of food, there are children in Gaza who will not see the celebration. Who are dying from hunger and bombs and the weight of being forgotten. Mothers burying daughters with bracelets they never got to wear.
For so many of our friends and loved ones, Ramadan is in its final days. this sacred, generous month that so many people around the world have poured their hearts into is almost over. And when it ends, the celebrations begin. The tables fill up. The new clothes come out. The world marks the occasion.
But not every child will be at that table.
That is not something I can sit with and do nothing about. And I don't think you can either not after reading this, not after seeing that bracelet, not after knowing what you now know.
This is the moment. Not tomorrow, not after the celebrations, not when things settle down. Now. While the feeling is still sitting in your chest. While her face is still in your mind.
Give tonight. Give for the children who are running out of time. Give like you mean it because somewhere in the world there is a little girl who saved up for something beautiful, and she deserved to wear it. They all do.
Don't let this moment pass.
For the girls who never got to wear their bracelets,
Hafsa