On the sands of the sea that knows Gaza’s pain more than any other, a small girl sat, wrapping her thin body in a faded dress. Her eyes did not follow the blue of the water but instead sank into an endless absence.

She gazed at the distant horizon as if searching for an Eid buried beneath the rubble of days, for a small toy lost in the bombing, for a doll she used to sleep with before the planes stole even her dreams.

Near the waves, she bid farewell to loved ones who vanished without goodbye, carving their names into the sand, hoping the sea would carry her peace to them.

In the pocket of her memory, the scent of "maamoul" stubbornly resisted the absence—the aroma that once filled the house on Eid’s eve, preceded by an unpurchasable joy.

She remembered the dress she had chosen months ago, hoping to rejoice in it this Eid, but today she wore the tailor-made garment of sorrow fitting all Gaza’s children.

No Eid gift this year, no kiss from an aunt or grandfather—only the silence of the sea and the roar of planes besiege her small heart.

Between a sigh and a tear, her mind returned to the neighborhood alley where she used to play hide-and-seek with friends, running, laughing, forgetting that even childhood laughter is hunted by war.

The Gazan girl did not ask for much; she only wished to return from the sea with a balloon in her hand, not a shrapnel. To see swings rise with children’s voices, not fall with their bodies.

As she inscribed letters of Eid with her palm in the sand, she wrote in a language understood only by those who have lived oppression, whispering to the waves: “Tell them we love life... but they don’t leave us an Eid to live in.”