When Everything Has Lost Meaning.

As I write this, the death toll in Gaza is 32,845.

13,000 of those precious lives are children.

“More than the total number of children killed in four years of global conflict.”

— UNRWA

Grief has calcified everything within me. Image after gut wrenching images has depleted my ability to write or speak coherently. There is nothing left to say that hasn’t been said and pleaded.

Words mean nothing in the face of a live streamed genocide; watched by a desensitized world run by those who profit from colonial land grabs and the war machine. The sanctity of life only applied to those far fairer than my people. And yet in pure spite of this, I still believe “ hope lies with the proles” ( George Orwell)

I dedicate this piece to all the innocent lives lost in Gaza and to all those who marched day after day in the streets of almost every major city around the world.

I lost my mother tongue in Gaza

Under 200 ton bombs

Crushing lungs of children unable to take their first breath

I lost my mother tongue in Gaza

Severed and maimed second class limbs

Beneath postured humanity

I lost my mother tongue in Gaza

Beneath the quantification

and intellectualization

of mass murder

I lost my mother tongue in Gaza

Covered in ashes of innocence

And silenced screams of mourning mothers

I lost my mother tongue in Gaza

Under the weight of political impunity

Under the residue of western civility

I lost my mother tongue in Gaza

Yet it speaks,

testifies to the loss of western integrity

It speaks in visceral vowels

piercing eyes blinded

And ears deafened by false sainthood.

It speaks in a thousand mother tongues chanting

In our thousands, in our millions

We are all Palestinians.

This blog post is part of the #30DaysArabVoices Blog Series, a month-long movement to feature the voices of Arabs as writers and scholars. Please CLICK HERE to read yesterday’s blog post by Sawsan Jaber.