At the side of the gritty, sewage-washed dirt road lies a heap of what seems to be stained boys’ garments. There is a little more to the spectacle, however; the garments have an owner, but so lean has he grown that the garments nearly swallow him up as he lies down. It is what he is doing now, lying curled up by the street, in a state some people may call sleep. However, his sleep must be differentiated from the kind that gives teddy-clutching children dreams of iced lollies and balloons, for his is tumultuous—disturbed—by the jagged rock he uses as a pillow pressing into the dirt-encrusted skin that binds his skull; by the constant clatter of donkey-led carts and the shuffling of worn feet in torn slippers; by the horrible sounds that echo in ears from the night before.

Presently from his sleep the boy rises. First it is nothing but a flicking of an eyelid as a fly lands on him; then it becomes the gradual loosening of his facial features; then the twitching of the bones (for the limbs are little more than that); then, at last, conscious movement: the boy extends his knee. Sitting up, the youth blinks several times, rubs his eyes, and glances about him. It is nearing the evening; the Gazan sun is sullenly sinking towards the horizon, having been reduced to nothing more than a dull red orb in a sky of dust.

Yes, now the boy is conscious. He has forgotten his name; all of his mind is forever concentrated on one word: run. His senses are alert, pricked merely to hear that one syllable. It is the one word that can rouse him from sleep, that can set the mangled tangle of skin and bone that he calls his body sprinting across the street at breakneck speed. For this one word could change his life.

But just as the sleep of innocent children in the tranquility of a warm bedroom must be differentiated from the sleep obtained by an emaciated beggar on the Gazan roadside, the consciousness of each case must be differentiated. This boy’s consciousness is not exactly wakefulness; he sees and he hears and he feels, but these senses fail to have an effect on his mind. He has been starved, deprived into dotage, so that all his strength must be focused on listening for that word: run. He lives for it, or rather, dies for want of it—run, run, run.

But the strength of this boy is fast waning… He may not be able to respond to this call another time. Three days he has been without food, and as long as his brain, from which starvation has effaced proper memory, can remember, without clean water. His vision is blurring; his head is throbbing; his guts churn with a force that a hurricane could envy. Sweat from pain and heat breaks over his body; yet he shivers, for his meagre flesh is not enough to retain proper warmth from the chilling breeze. His limbs are trembling; will they be able to hold him up and carry him when the call is sounded?

Hours pass. The sun has vanished. Dust clouds and smoke fumes obscure what there is of a moon. The boy has fallen into a light doze; there is little else he can do. His head is buried in his angular knees. But hark—here it comes. That one syllable is yelled in the high-pitched tones of some damsel in distress, and all around, her call is being heard and obeyed. It is almost mechanical; if one watched from directly above, one would see all men, women, and children racing immediately in the opposite direction of the call. No—we have an exception. Our little hero has not stirred from his spot.

“RUN!” comes the awful shriek again, this time from a man of significant age. Still the boy does not twitch. A horrible sound of bricks and mortar disintegrating in the air and thudding with death-dealing force into the ground fills the scene. This sound is followed by another just like it, but louder, closer. It has come dangerous. But we sha’n’t flee from the scene, for this boy is our charge. And there is this creeping suspicion within me that we shall not have to linger much longer for him. There—another explosion. A piece of brick strikes him on the head and he is flung onto his side. In his eyes we can see it now—he will sleep forever, a sleep so unlike that it is almost incomparable to that of little children in safe houses. And then here comes a grey metal object from the sky—it falls—it strikes the ground—everywhere the air is dust-coloured and vision cannot permeate it. Perhaps tomorrow some emaciated mongrel dog should find his leg-bone strewn on the ground, or a mourning father may pick up his ragged slipper from the roadside, or a little girl might find a piece of his garment that has not frayed out entirely, and wind it around her own bleeding arm.

Then again—perhaps tomorrow the mongrel should die of hunger before finding the limb; perhaps the father may succumb to heartbreak; perhaps the little girl’s arm will run red too long, until too little of that scarlet liquid of life remains in her. Who knows?

Thus is the plight of the Gazans.