Hunger Is Writing

Who are these people we see in the photographs carrying sacks of flour? Are they thieves? Are they hungry? Are they our brothers in genocide? Or partners in it?

They dropped food on us from airplanes, and yet we did not eat.

The trucks came in, we saw them, and yet we were not fulfilled.

Hunger still tramples upon our souls.

I wasted all my savings on stale bread and cold water.

Witkoff visited us, he was a mile away from my tent ... and I am still hungry.

What are we supposed to do, those of us who don’t know how to steal? Who were raised to believe that hunger is shameful?

We are the children of proud homes. We conceal our hunger. We do not approach food if not invited. We do not reach for other people's plates. We would never dare to open the refrigerator in someone else’s home.

If dinner is delayed, we smell our palms, for the virtuous are satisfied by the scent of their own hands, by remnants of the blessing that clung to their fingers when the houses were abundant.

I am hungry. My neighbours are hungry, my friends are hungry, and so are thousands like us who were raised to believe that dignity comes before bread.

We don’t eat on the street, we don’t beg, we don’t ask for seconds, we don’t stare at other people's food. We leave our neighbours’ homes when dinner time approaches and we say thank you, even if we were not offered anything.

We were raised to be filled with decency, not bread.

But now I am hungry. Hungry in a way that is unlike anything I was taught.

Hungry as in famine, not as in gluttony. Hungry as in siege, not as in austerity.

Hungry from loss of patience, from absence of bread.

I buy flour every day with blood. I cover my stomach with my hand and smell my palm as my father taught me ... But now it is the one sniffing me like a dog, barking at a body eaten up by hunger, at skin that bears no trace of sustenance, only traces of flight, traces of my having nothing left, not even the ability to be a son of proud homes.

I am hungry. And I am not looking for compassion; I am looking for a scream.

Hunger has left me. It is now writing about itself, drawing a question in the sands of Al-Mawasi: How many loaves of bread do we need to regain our dignity?

I am hungry. And this hand, which used to tire from carrying nourishment, now reaches out not to take ... but to bid farewell.