A child not yet six years old, whose voice was louder than his frail body and stronger than the silence that cloaks Gaza. What he left behind for the world was not his little toy, nor even a kiss on his mother’s forehead, but a single word that burst from his weak heart like a cry from all of humanity: “I’m hungry.”

Abdullah Abu Zarqa, the Palestinian child whose voice became a symbol of hunger under siege, is no longer among us.

A siege that stole his childhood

He passed away on Monday in a hospital in Adana, Turkey, after a short journey through life but a long struggle with illness and malnutrition — a journey that began under a blockade that robbed childhood of its bread and a mother’s embrace.

“I’m hungry”… a voice to the world

Weeks ago, Abdullah appeared in a short video crying out, “I’m hungry.” His words swept across the world like wildfire, stirring hearts with a pain that politics tries to silence: the suffering of children.

His cry became a human icon, yet the walls built by the siege rose higher than the boy’s fragile voice. Emotions poured out across social media, and his haunting image spread with lightning speed — because his tears reached humanity and touched living consciences, and his eyes spoke louder than speeches that failed before his pain.

In a foreign land

Appeals could not save Abdullah. He was taken from his mother’s arms to a distant bed in a foreign land, where his final breath slipped away, leaving his words suspended in the air — chasing a global conscience that seemed mute.

And that was not all. His little sister, Habiba, now lies between life and death, battling liver enlargement, blood poisoning, and severe malnutrition.

Abdullah is gone, but his cry remains. It will echo in the world’s memory as a warning bell: that the children of Gaza ask for nothing more than their simplest right — to live… and a piece of bread that will never silence their hunger.