She didn’t understand what war meant, but she knew it was the reason the kitchen was empty, the lights were out for countless nights, and the ground trembled every time a missile screamed from the sky.

She would sit silently on the threshold of a broken door, beneath a half-collapsed wall, clutching to her chest a tattered piece of cloth—not a doll, not a pillow, but the last remnant of a world that once was.

Every morning, before the planes began their daily rounds, she would walk barefoot, her small steps sinking into the dust mixed with rubble. Her face was pale, her eyes vacant, as if searching for something lost forever. She would arrive at the temporary distribution center and join a long line of silent souls—women and children, all bearing eyes damp with fear and hands empty but for hope.

Waiting became another homeland.

Sometimes, she would sit in the corner, watching the metal containers where thin steam curled upward, waiting for someone to call her number—or for the sky to suddenly open and rain down bread. Time was no longer measured in hours, but in the growls of hunger, in the number of times she coughed from the cold, or the smoke, or the disappointment.

Hunger was bigger than the body.

Crying was no longer her first response—silence became her only shield. She got used to sleeping without dinner, pretending to be full so she wouldn’t worry her already anxious mother. If she ever received bread, she would save half in the pocket of her dress, just in case the night lasted longer than usual.

She stopped asking about the things she loved, or about toys, or about the school that had turned into ruins. All she wanted was a bite of food and a safe place that wouldn’t collapse over her head.

A childhood the world doesn’t hear.

There are thousands like her—frail faces withering on the edge of existence, only shown in news broadcasts as numbers. But hunger isn’t a number, and fear isn’t just a side note in a political report. Some wait the entire day for a single meal that barely satisfies them. Others hide under desks—not for play, but for survival.

The final plea: it’s not too much to ask to live.

In a time when food is sent into space, the children of Gaza are still starving under the same sky. Their demands aren’t great: a little food, a little safety, a little light in a heavy night.

And it isn’t too much to ask of human conscience—to hear them, to see their faces, to open its eyes to a suffering that can’t be told, only lived, every single day.