My mother used to say:
If we die, we die together.
She held me and my brother close to her heart,
flesh against flesh,
not out of comfort,
but to ensure our bodies would be found as one.

In Lebanon, just like in Gaza… nowhere was safe.
She would not take refuge in shelters
“Rubble buries names,” she said.
She wanted our bodies on the street,
visible, findable,
grievable.

She tells me again,
how she’d wake up screaming
in dreams,
the airstrike came
and separated us… she tries to find us, but
her voice is lost, searching in the dust.

She saw babies survive,
the only ones left in entire families,
crying alone in the rubble…
She lived with that sound
long after the bombs stopped falling.

And now…
We watch six-year-old Ward,
wrapped in smoke and screams,
walks barefoot through the charred remains
of what, seconds ago, was her shelter.
Not knowing yet…her whole family was swallowed by the flames.

Another mother,
Dr. Alaa al-Najjar
was saving other people’s children,
while her own
were burning to death in their home.

Can you imagine
how her heart received them?
Through the smoke,
the ash,
the absence.

What kind of heart does it take
to keep stitching up the world
while yours
has been torn open?

I think of all the mothers
who dream of dying with their children,
because the thought of living after them
is the cruelest sentence of all.

I think of bodies,
visible and buried.
Of nightmares passed down,
like bloodlines.

I think of Ward,
walking through fire,
with her innocence trailing behind her
like a burnt ribbon.

And I think of their names.
Remember them.

Hind. Ward. Yaqeen. The soul of the soul. Yahya. Eve. Rival. Sadeen. Rakan. Ruslan. Jibran. Luqman. Sedar.
And 20,000 more.

They are not numbers.
They are not news.
They are not “collateral damage.”

Say their names
like a prayer.
Say their names
like a protest.
Say their names
So they echo louder than the silence.

Because my mother once held me close and said:
If we die, we die together.

But these children
died alone.
While the world watched…