He left for only an hour.
Just long enough to stand in line.
To hold two tiny birth forms. One for his son, one for his daughter.
To make it official. To give them names.
He said he wanted to be the first to call them by name when he came back.
But when he returned, there was no one left to call.
The house was gone.
His wife. His newborn twins.
All buried beneath the rubble before their names were ever written down.
The papers were still warm in his hands.
Their names, the only thing left of them.
I keep thinking about that.
How a father went to register life, and came back to death.
How a home filled with new cries and milk and prayers turned to dust before the ink even dried.
In Gaza, that’s what parenthood has become.
You don’t plan birthdays, you plan burials.
You don’t choose baby names, you write epitaphs.
I keep thinking about how he walked out of the door with hope in his chest
and came back carrying only silence.
How the pen he used to sign their names is now heavier than the rubble that buried them.
He didn’t even get to hear them cry again.
Didn’t get to tell his wife he was proud.
Didn’t get to hand her the papers and say,
“Look, they’re real now.”
Because by the time he came home, everything that made him a father was gone.
No home. No cries. No heartbeat.
Just two names on paper the only proof that they ever existed.
And I can’t stop thinking,
How many parents are left holding names instead of children?
How many birth certificates have turned into death notices before the ink dries?
They say the dead in Gaza are numbers, but to me?
They’re this father standing in the dust, whispering names no one will ever answer to again.
For the lullabies that never left a mother’s lips,
Hafsa
