PHOTO: REUTERS | HATEM KHALED

TIASHA IDRAK

Li’l Del is walking all alone

Li’l Del wants to find her way home.

She walks across the desolate streets and plaza,

She’s staggering along the broken boulevards of Gaza.

How strange fate is! So fickle, so absurd!

For Delila’s morning was so ordinary, so undisturbed!

A kunafe from mama, a kiss from yaba (papa),

Then she went to school, our child from Gaza.

So she walked, her dress brand new,

Dancing in the wind, blue in hue,

Tied with blue ribbons, her brown hair,

Her brother’s touch, filled with care.

So she reached her school, played with her friend,

Who knew that it was near the end?

As she was learning poems, math, riddles of science to crack,

Boom! Boom!

All on a sudden, her world went black.

As she woke up amidst dust and rubble,

She saw something unseen before,

Her school, playground, teachers and friends,

There was nothing left there anymore,

Delila is now walking all alone,

She wants to find her way home.

Her tattered dress, now caked with dust,

Her bare feet now drenched in blood.

She is now walking on the path where angels don’t tread,

Delila is now walking in the city of the dead.

As she looks at the blood stained sky, does she know?

That Death is watching hell reign down below!

Delila is staggering all alone,

Her tears have dried on their own.

Look, how cruel the world is!

Where tyranny reigns and justice weeps!

A statistics, that’s what she is,

A pawn in a game,

Stripped off her rights, freedom, her name!

She stares at the messengers of death above,

Soaring furiously, devoid of mercy or love!

Delila walks in the city of the dead,

Humanity has Albatross around its neck!

So she walks among corpses,

Oh how it reeks!

Tired, numb and limp,

She still seeks!

Humiliated cross of Jesus, broken domes,

She saw it all, but she didn’t find home.

The tree near her home, she sees it finally!

At last she’s going to be reunited with her family!

Another corner, just a little more…

She’ll see her mom near the door…

But wait, stop… Where is her house?

Fear crept as the question roused.

No.. No.. Something is horribly wrong–

Reality hits after the search for so long.

For there is no house, only rubble,

As death smirks, bursting her bubble.

Her eyes averts to the now crimson stained, her brother’s ball,

Its owner is now unable to hear her tired calls.

Grasping it tightly, now she wails,

For all her search has now failed!

Dead, gone, her family is gone!

This time she truly is all alone!

As tears streamed down, did she notice?

“They” have found another target to practice?

As she looks at the scarlet sky, now she knows

That death is watching hell reign down below.

Tiasha Idrak is drowning in a swamp of her own thoughts at the moment. She writes and daydreams, the latter is more applicable most of the time.