July 27, 2025

it is still your village

The baby was brought to the pediatric department of Nasser Hospital on Friday. She was already dead. A worker at the morgue carefully removed her Mickey Mouse-printed shirt, pulling it over her sunken, open eyes. He pulled up the hems of her pants to show her knobby knees. His thumb was wider than her ankle. He could count the bones of her chest.

The girl had weighed over 3 kilograms (6.6 pounds) when she was born, her mother said. When she died, she weighed less than 2 kilograms (4.4 pounds).

— The latest child to starve to death in Gaza weighed less than when she was born [AP, July 26 2025]

Attribution

Once in a village that is burning
      because a village is always somewhere burning 

And if you do not look because it is not your village
      it is still your village 

In that village is a hollow child
      You drown when he looks  at you with his black, black eyes 

And if you do not cry because he is not your child
      he is still your child 
— from Your Village by Elana Bell