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Julian Delia Sep 2018
PART II: A GLASS CEILING DRIPPING WITH BLOOD

Mohanad Younis, of Gaza City;
Where the sand is stained with blood
As the world feigns pity.
Broken families, unspoken tragedies –
The order of everyday life.
He was born amidst chaos and strife,
To a divorcing husband and wife.

If life were lived in peace,
This dissolution would’ve been a release.
Not much more, not much less –
A family’s lore, a decision to digress.
In war-ravaged land, however,
One needs every helping hand,
Especially a soul that was so clever.

Such a curious, voracious mind needed to understand;
A furious, rapacious search,
Unexplained conundrums to unravel and unwind.
Why do we exist?
Why do we fight and resist?
Is it worth living with all these scars on my wrists?
Does anybody outside Palestine care?
Will they keep on watching?
Or will they be unable to bear?

Of this and much more Mohanad must’ve thought,
As he sat at the Marna House Hotel,
Smoking cigarettes, freshly bought.
A student at al-Azhar, a mild-mannered pharmacist,
A prudent man who would have gotten far.
An admirer of Bassel al-Araj, another victim of oppression –
An inspirer, a brother who alleviated his depression.
Hunted down and killed by the IDF,
Another pacifist murdered for being an activist.

One figure of many who died;
One of those who did not want to hide.
Mohanad wasn’t a resistance fighter –
He felt that such persistence did not make their burdens lighter.
Instead, he wished to make his mind brighter,
And perhaps have family of his own.

He was in love, and wanted to get married,
But life was rough, and warranted a future far more harried.
The final twist of horror?
Having the intellect to apply for University,
And deserving the respect needed to obtain a reply,
Yet not being allowed to leave the city.
That is the news Mohanad had received,
Hopes and dreams suddenly deceived.
Denied a right to education
Because he was born on the wrong end of a cruel fabrication.
The glass ceiling, dripping with blood,
Swallowed his hopes whole like a flood.
Self-explanatory, at this point. Refer to Part I if you're confused...
Julian Delia Aug 2018
PART I – BORN TO CHAOS AND IMPRISONMENT

Imagine –
Being born in a decade of hate,
Of fear of being attacked, front and rear,
Of sleeping with one eye open,
A present reality that is far from golden –
It is a nightmare of self-perpetuating terror.
Welcome to Palestine;
The land where the dogs of war
Come to feast and dine.

70 years of violence;
70 years of resilience.
Millions killed or displaced,
Homes vacated but never replaced,
Not even by those who got out alive,
Scrambling to rebuild, desperate to survive.
For how can you not be enraged and stupefied
When your country’s being erased
And hopelessness is causing suicides?
How can you not throw stones and riot
When your own government kills you
And then proceeds to alter the story or deny it?

That is the reality
That Mohanad Younis was born into;
One of many, a broken generation,
Born with a noose around their neck,
Betrayed and forgotten as a nation.
Desperation was an eternal companion,
A sibling, practically,
Always with them like the Colorado River with the Grand Canyon.

Mohanad was a bright, industrious soul;
A voracious bookworm, with the hunger to swallow a library whole.
Dostoevsky, Dickens and Euripides,
Amongst many others;
A young man who wrote his own tales,
Perhaps keen to escape reality,
Or encapsulate it if all else fails.

When guillotines rain down from the sky,
When prayers are said but your god(s) don’t even reply,
No author, nor their best tales,
Can overcome the missile storms and the bullet hails.
This will be the story
Of Mohanad Younis,
The beloved writer who killed himself
Because all else really did fail.
A eulogy to a fellow soul, writer and inspiration.
'No need to apologise for your early departure.'
Julian Delia Nov 2018
PART III: THE LOCKED DOOR

The straw that broke the camel’s back.
The lethal blow that made his resilience crack.
Think, analyse the commensurate reaction to his fate;
Paralysed and desperate, in his own words.

‘Asphyxiated’ seems like such a clean word;
‘He died of asphyxiation,’ that’s what the articles wrote.
What about dying of starvation? Let me elaborate on this note –
I meant, dying from being starved of hope.
I hardly think one ‘asphyxiating’ does this justice.
How about ‘a sense of debilitating hopelessness’, instead?
Or maybe ‘hopelessness that feels like all-encompassing dread?’

Because that’s what all of Gaza feels right now.
How? How the **** did we get here?
Year after year, Palestinians die and suffer.
Fear after fear, they come alive, one after the other.
‘We’re dead, already’ –
How does reading something like that not make you feel unsteady?

So, what do you do after suffering like that?
Nothing, except for lying down flat on your bed,
Crying, watching everybody around you dying.
And then, when you can’t cry anymore,
When you realise your entire country was treated like an eye sore,
When you can’t take it anymore,
That’s when you lock the ******* door.
That’s when Asma broke through that door,
To find her prodigal son dead, collapsed on the floor.
I finished it; Mohanad, I hope I have done your soul justice.
David P Carroll Apr 2022
Palestinians suffering
Every day and it's
Sadness and pain
All day more children
Brown up today and
Palestine will never be
Free Palestine is so
Peaceful the whole
World can see
But the Palestinians
Don't understand
The whole world helps
Ukraine but turns away
Because there Muslims
In Palestine
One big hypocrite.
Palestinians suffering every day
Ukrainians are getting help.
American government hates blacks and Muslims and they say they believe in Jesus Christ this is a sin.
Ryan O'Leary Jan 17
A mist came to greet,
soft words uttered
that silence only
survives while sound
seeks an accommodation
for its echo
Ryan O'Leary Nov 2024
To document a childless city, one

would first need to remove sound.


But that is impossible due to the

bedlam chaos mayhem uproar

tumult commotion confusion and

disorder not to mention the furore

and frenzy breaking loose just now.


My camera was confiscated i would

have preferred if they took my ears.


I see where a dying dog burrowed

beside a pile of debris and rubble

and she is no doubt waiting in vain

for -

For what ?

For me to capture Khan Younis

without children, but surely, that

must be nearly almost impossible!
Johnny Noiπ Nov 2018
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— The End —