Afrasianet - Maryam Mashtawi - She wasn't running after a butterfly, she wasn't chasing a ball that slipped out of the hands of children.
She wasn't complaining because her doll was broken, or because her mother refused to buy her a new toy.
She was running after water, something that in Gaza is no longer just a blessing, but a great miracle, with which hope is born and fatigue dies.
She stops for a moment, then falls to the ground from exhaustion.
There are images that shake the conscience, and there are images that redefine words.
How can the word "child" be combined with the word "suffering" to such an extent?
How could two hands that should have learned to draw first learn how to carry water?
In Gaza, a child can spend long hours searching for a dose of water for a day's worth of water for her family.
Elsewhere in the world, a child may cry because the internet has been shut down.
There, children cry because the water has been cut off, the electricity has been cut off, safety has been cut off, and even the ability to dream has been cut off. It kills the little details that make life.
The sounds of laughter steal from the alleys, turning the once-to-play squares into places of waiting and fear.
She makes the child grow up prematurely, so that his little face bears the features of an old man, who has been exhausted by the days before he learns to write his name.
She carries on her shoulders the weight of a thirsty city, the weight of a mother who fears for her children, the weight of a father exhausted by the search for a living, and the weight of a world watching the scene from behind the screens, and then going on with his day as if nothing had happened.
Maybe she will go back to her tent panting.
Maybe some water will spill in the way.
Maybe she'll apologize, and she's guiltless, because she couldn't save every drop.
When water becomes his biggest dream, he begins to count the drops, just as people count their treasures.
It did not choose war, it did not choose blockade, it did not choose to be born at a time when the most basic human rights have become a distant wish.
All she wanted, perhaps, was to live an ordinary day, a day like a child's day.
To wake up to her mother's voice, not to the sound of explosions. She should carry her school bag, not a jar of water.
To get her clothes dirty with mud while she plays, not dust as she searches for life.
And that she falls to the ground from the intensity of laughter, not from the intensity of fatigue.
It is as if humanity is beginning to lose its ability to be stunned.
The news of a thirsty child passing between the news, a picture of a crying mother turning into another post, and the sight of a child collapsing under the weight of water becomes part of a daily routine that the screens are used to.
Because the moment we get used to the pain of children, it's the moment when we lose something of our humanity.
People may disagree in politics, in history, and in the interpretation of wars, but no one should disagree that a child deserves to be a child.
This is a fact that does not need statements, conferences, or speeches.
You just need hearts that we haven't lost the ability to feel. I hope that one day this child will look at that picture and not believe it was her.
To laugh when she says, "I used to carry water all that far!" as people laugh as they remember their childhood.
Childhood should not be measured by the number of liters a child carries, the number of miles he travels in search of water, or the number of times he falls from fatigue. It is not only this child who has fallen.
The victory of a simple woman
He wasn't carrying a bouquet of flowers. He had a whole lifetime of fatigue, he wrapped a black ribbon around it, wrapped in precious gifts, and walked with him towards the woman who had never known how to give her children flowers, because she was giving them what was much more precious than her, her age.
He stood in front of her in his black suit, his graduation hat swaying over his shoulder, while she stood in her simple place of work, practicing her day like any other day, waiting for a celebration, no applause, no cameras.
She was doing her work in silence, as her motherhood had done for many years.When her eyes met his, words couldn't describe it.Not because he had become an engineer, but because she saw, in an instant, their little boy returning to her from the ages of the year.
She saw herself running between home and work, calculating the price of books before calculating the price of a new dress for her, and postponing her small desires year after year, so that her son would not postpone his dream.
Mothers do not memorize the years by numbers, they memorize them by the number of nights they have spent with a sick child, the number of times they have claimed that they are not hungry for their children to eat, and the number of wishes they have silently buried so that they can be planted in the future for their children.
She cries because life, at last, has given her back a part of what she took.
When he was thrown into her lap, he wasn't hugging a single woman.
He was hugging all the way. He hugs the mornings when she went out to work before sunrise, and the days when she came back tired, but she hid her fatigue with a smile so that her children could see nothing but safety.
He hugged her rough hands from work, and her heart, which remained soft despite the harshness of the days.
At that moment, everything was gone, the passers-by disappeared, the noise of the street disappeared, and the camera itself disappeared.
Only a mother and her son remained.
How many mothers never went to school, but went out as a doctor, engineer or university professor?
I liked that this young man did not start his day of joy among friends, and did not make his first celebration in a luxurious hall or a crowded restaurant.
He chose to go first to the place where the story began, to the woman who believed in his success before he believed in himself, to the woman who was credited.
Only there, the graduation ceremony was completed, the university awarded him an engineering degree, and his mother gave him access to it. He gifted her a bouquet of roses.
But the truth is that the rose was a modest gift to a woman who had spent years planting spring in her son's life, while postponing her own spring.How can a few flowers reward nights of anxiety?
Perhaps the most beautiful thing that children can do is to acknowledge this fact.
To say to the whole world, "Without her, I wouldn't be here."
In a time when success has become attributed to individual intelligence, we sometimes forget that behind every great achievement is a tired face that did not appear in the picture, cracked hands that did not ascend to the podium, and a heart that kept praying in silence until God answered.
You graduate from years of anxiety, from poverty exams, and from the never-ending tests of patience.
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Maryam Mashtawi - Lebanese Writer
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