Letters for Palestinian childhoods | Reimagining Childhood Studies

I’ll Meet You in a Dream

by Reimagining Childhood Studies | Nov 25, 2023 | Letters for Palestinian childhoods

I don’t know your name, and this haunts me. I want to say your name, to keep you alive. Because I don’t know if you are or not. But when I close my eyes, I see you. Your hands are chalked, grey, from the particles of the destruction. You are digging, through the...

My mother was a child of war

by Reimagining Childhood Studies | Nov 25, 2023 | Letters for Palestinian childhoods

My mother was a child of war in a cellar she hid with her mother while the bombs – silent ones which would suddenly burst – crushed homes on the street and she waited for father to return My father was a young man of war in the belly of a ship he kept...

Stories of Children

by Reimagining Childhood Studies | Nov 22, 2023 | Letters for Palestinian childhoods

When I was a little girl, I was scared of the dark. I used to slip into my grandmother’s bed in the middle of the night, and nestled against her, all nice and warm, I used to say: “ can you tell me a story?” Invariably, she would start “long long ago, there was a...

Dear little one

by Reimagining Childhood Studies | Nov 22, 2023 | Letters for Palestinian childhoods

The world is dark outside and in, The noise is scary, Even if you put your fingers in your ears. You are hungry, wet and cold, Where is daddy gone? Why is mummy crying? Why is the world so hostile and unsafe? Home is under the rubble, Everything is gone, Even your...

This Saturday

by Reimagining Childhood Studies | Nov 21, 2023 | Letters for Palestinian childhoods

This Saturday, November 25, my daughter Laura turns 4 years old. She wants a unicorn cake and lots of balloons. It’s hard for me not to have mixed feelings when, while I buy her balloons and look for unicorn decorations for her cake, I think of...

To the Children of Beit Lahia, Maghazi, Deir el-Balah and Rafah