Empty Chairs
This poem is dedicated to all the Palestinian children, all their mothers, all their fathers, their siblings, and their families.
At least 3,760 Palestinian children have been killed in the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip since October 7, according to the Ministry of Health. — Defense for Children International Palestine
Author’s Note
“I wish children didn’t die.
I wish they would be temporarily
elevated to the skies until the war ends.Then they would return home safe,
and when their parents would ask them:
“where were you?” they would say:
“we were playing in the clouds.”— Ghassan Kanafani
Kanafani wrote many wonderful works, but this one has been shared a lot lately. Maybe the world finally realises that these many dead children are too many to pretend like they are just numbers. Perhaps, for once, looking away is not an option. I do not know what else to say when I look at the numbers that keep rising; no humans, no matter how old or young, should meet their demise this way and this cruelly. I wrote this poem out of anger and frustration — I want people to feel my anger in how the ocean rises at night. I want you to feel it swallows you whole because I am tired of yelling and proving that my stance is not because of my hatred towards another religion or community — it is because I cannot stand the ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Palestinian people that we are witnessing before our eyes.
Even though as weeks go by, and I have been relentlessly talking about this to my friends, sharing thoughts with strangers, and sometimes replying to people who share their vitriol with me, I know that I will not back down and settle into the silence of ignorance. I will continue to be the voice of the silenced as long as it needs to be. My spirit will not go gentle into that good night. In fact, it will rise and rage, inshaAllah.
