At a school in Deir al-Balah, once used to be for learning and then turned, during the genocide, into an overcrowded shelter, some children were trying to go back to their desks. It is a modest effort led by the UNICEF to revive the educational process for those pupils who can manage to make it after three years of interruption.
The children try to practice, though partially, a right they used to have before the war started and took away their childhood. It is a one single hour class during which the school allows teachers to use one of the classrooms. It is an initiative that aims at keeping the little ones on track so that they do not forget what does a classroom mean or how chalk smells and a blackboard look like.
There, on the other side of the courtyard, sits a little barefoot girl. She seemed to have walked a long way. In front of her, there are empty pots. Probably, she is waiting for her turn to get some food. The expression on her tiny face seemed as if she wanted to let us know that the war was not yet over and that she was still hungry.
I do not know this child, nor do I know what she was thinking of when my friend Fadi took her photo. However, I am aware that if she realized what was going on around her, she would have cursed the whole world for placing her in the wrong line, in a place that she does not belong to, and in a life that was not meant to be hers. She would have known the difference by then between standing in a line to enter a classroom and waiting in another to get some food.
Malek El Shinbary
23/10/2025
(Translated by Palestinian Stories)
