A Letter to My Slain Son: If you Lived Through this Forced Famine

"Exhaustion gnaws at our bones, and betrayal has taught us more than Plato ever did, or Freud’s theories."

My son, Kinan, whom Israel murdered along with 3 of his siblings in 2023. It will soon to be two years since the house he was sheltering in was bombed.

My Beloved Kinan,

The earth is filled with so much evil. I searched high and low for bread and found none.

Throughout this forced famine by Israel, I keep thinking to myself: If you were still here, how would I bear it if you looked at me and said, “Mama, I’m hungry”?

What would I even say to you?

I know how much you love fruit. How you eat it with a charm that delights me. After every bite, you’d say, “Mama, it’s delicious.”

I loved every little food-related ritual you had: how you would choose your favorite colored plate, your special spoon.

You’d ask me to slice the apple into long, thin pieces, but the orange, “leave it whole, Mama, don’t break it apart,” you’d insist, over and over again.

And now I fear: how will I ever come to terms with you not being able to perform all your meticulous food rituals, those little details of you ever again?

But losing your food quirks is still far easier than losing you altogether.

My heart aches for the mothers who stare into the hungry eyes of their children.

And in every pair of hungry eyes I see, your eyes stop me in my tracks—what if they were Kinan’s?

And every time a child cries, your voice echoes in my mind—what if Kinan were crying, sobbing, asking me for food? What would I do?

The worst thing the occupation did to Gaza wasn’t just the killing—it was the twisted invention and execution of every possible way to kill.

One of the worst ways to die is to die of hunger.

And the saddest thing in the world is that happiness is now for us measured in but a kilo of flour.

Happiness, which once meant something vast—watching the sea, eating ice cream, listening to music, gazing at the sky from a balcony—has now shrunk.

In a forced famine, all standards shift, the foundations crumble, and hunger devours every attempt at joy outside its frame.

Even human beings shrink, my dear.

They become nothing more than wretched seekers of bread, rather than seekers of meaning, of existence, of devotion.

A man shrinks and hides from his children’s eyes when they say, “We’re hungry,” and he cannot feed them.

Hunger becomes a hideous phantom: no matter how you try to chase it away, it won’t leave.

Because it isn’t a stray bullet.

It’s a bullet aimed precisely at your humanity.

And what then?

Honestly, I don’t know.

I see no beautiful end to this genocide.

I can’t even imagine one.

Exhaustion gnaws at our bones, and betrayal has taught us more than Plato ever did, or Freud’s theories.

I used to struggle to define the word, “betrayal.”

I thought the betrayal of Joseph by his brothers was the clearest example.

But even that isn’t an accurate match.

Because they left Joseph in the well in the hope that a caravan would find him.

Even in their crime, they gave him a chance at survival.

But us? What of us?

We were thrown into the well—and then they unleashed the wolves: hunger, bombing, displacement.

Then they sealed the well shut.

The world passes us by as if we’re invisible.

And when our moans disturb them, they simply press the mute button on the audio icon.

How vile this affair of war is. And how filthy a human becomes when he turns into a maniacal killer.

Worse still—when he becomes deaf to our screams.

Blind to our blood.

And yet—maybe, just maybe, there is still a small light that we follow in these brutal days.

I find that light in dreaming.

I’m glad that I still know how to dream.

Even this genocide could not steal from me the dream that, perhaps tomorrow morning, the war will stop.

Today is day 660 of the genocide on Gaza.

Every day I whisper to it:
Stop, you wretched monster—stop, so that my dream may come true.

A morning without war, without death.

Thank you, Kinan.

Your passing has taught me so much.

It taught me that rockets can’t erase the beauty of your image from my memory.
That hunger cannot make me forget your voice.
That you shine a light into my darkness whenever I feel despair.

I will stay strong for you, my beloved child.
I will stay strong, so that you never become just a number in a news bulletin,
so that the world never forgets what a magnificent, inspiring child you were,
And so that you remain—forever—a curse upon the occupation.

I love you always my Kinan, my light.

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This letter was published originally in Arabic on Sotour.net