These Walls Have Had Enough

If these walls could talk, they'd crumble from the horrors they’ve seen. Blood splatters all over the floor. Body parts lie in heaps on the ground, wails fill every part of the room. Within these walls are where lives were taken with injustice. Where dreams of innocent children were crushed. Where they smiled through the pain for the last time. Within these walls are where a mother called out for her children but her calls were met with a piercing silence. Where a father held his children's remains in waste bags and cried. Where a child lost every member of his family. Where people went insane holding onto their loved ones' dead bodies. Within these walls are where parents write the names of their children on their legs and on their hands to identify them if they’re murdered. These walls have cried out for help, but the world was deaf. These walls have spoken out of their oppression time and time again, but the world was busy portraying them as the enemy. Their voices came in screams of pain and heartache, but the world was crying, praying for their killers. Everything these walls suffer, they had to suffer on their own. These walls have seen bodies flooding in by the hundreds all at once until they had no more spaces to spare. They’ve seen families being ripped apart, families being completely erased with no survivors and hoped their names won’t be forgotten. They’ve seen doctors coming across the faces of those they loved lying amongst the dead but had to keep working. They’ve heard their cries, seen their angst upon their faces. But never once had they seen them give up. Piles upon piles of a never-ending flow of victims. These walls stretched out, no longer the four walls of a morgue, but they extended to the hospitals, to schools, to anywhere else they thought would be safe, until the whole city became one big morgue. They even reached out to ice cream trucks, where instead of seeing the smiles on their kids’ faces eating an ice cream, parents kept their lifeless kids inside in bloody shrouds. These walls thought they’d seen the worst, but still, every day is a new horror, every day comes with a bigger loss, every day is the worst.

If these walls could talk, they'd cry out, is this the death of humanity? If these walls could talk, they'd ask, what did these children do to deserve this? What did they do to deserve to be stripped of their rights to dream, to grow up, to have a family? To be stripped of their simple right to be children.

For years these walls have watched the people within die defending what they believed in. For years these people have been urged to leave their homes, leave their land, leave their memories and their families and their dignity. For years these people refused to be moved, they stood tall, fearless, and smiling in the face of death. For years they lived in oppression. And now the world asks them, why don’t you live in peace with your oppressors?

All these walls ever asked for was freedom. Was that too much to ask? If these walls could talk, they'd weep.

These walls are not just random walls, and if these walls could talk, they'd be proud to say, we are Palestine.