Do you know what a child’s diary looks like in Gaza?
It isn’t written with crayons.
It isn’t full of drawings of stick figures or sunshine.
It’s a shaking little boy, staring into a cracked phone.
His cheeks are hollow.
His lips are cracked.
His voice is breaking.
“Mom… I miss you. I haven’t eaten in four days.”
That’s it. That’s his diary entry.
No bedtime story.
No schoolyard game.
No favourite meal.
Just hunger.
And a whisper into the void.
Do you know what it takes for a child to say that out loud?
To count days of emptiness in his stomach?
To miss his mother because she’s gone under the rubble?
To look straight into a phone because there’s no one left to listen in real life?
Children should record birthdays, not starvation.
They should be telling their mothers, “I love you.”
Not, “I miss you.”
But this is Gaza.
And the only way he can fight to stay alive
is by recording his own suffering
hoping a stranger, somewhere,
cares enough to save him.
And us?
We’ll watch.
We’ll blink.
We’ll scroll.
And he’ll still be hungry.
So tell me
if we can hear a starving child beg,
and still go back to our warm beds,
our full plates,
our ordinary, beautiful lives
what does that make us?
Because if this doesn’t move us to give,
then maybe the truth is worse than the siege:
that his diary isn’t just about him.
Maybe it’s about us.
Hafsa