to the dead palestinian fetus on my instagram feed

To the dead fetus on my instagram feed,

I am ashamed to write to you from the comfort of my keyboard, just a stupid girl, on a quiet street a mere - perhaps - few hours from where you lay.

But I am writing to you.

Dear you, and please read you as whatever name your mother had dreamed for you,

Let me tell you about the world you missed.

In America they have heated arguments about many things. They discuss women’s bodies and the rights men have over their wombs. They discuss if Palestinians deserve this situation, this instability, this death. They have presidential debates where they, angrily, bring up past convictions or dating history, where they try to prove they can do better than before. Their white skin gets heated, red and frustrated, but it seems to me they keep going in circles. They post and monetize the videos and perhaps, if we went down the line long and deep enough, that monetization cost you your life. Perhaps it funded the military that killed you. Did you know there was a military trying to kill you? Did you know you didn't have one to protect you?

I am sure that the person that carried you did so with delight. Though, perhaps, seeing your size, she was afraid when she realized she missed a period or two, what with the bombs raining down all around you. But I like to imagine that her hand circled her stomach and she smiled ever so softly, and dreamt of a free Palestine, for you. I am sure that as they sought refuge in the school you were to die in, she imagined you, older, arms folded over the desk, a smile on your face.

Dearest child, I have no maternal instincts. It is the reason I wonder about my ability to be a mother, for there is constant lack of softness about the idea of a baby in my womb. I do not want to be a mother, I know this. But I saw you, amidst this gore that prevails (with no end in sight), and thought how unspeakable it is that the world gets to witness this destruction and move not so much a finger, and I felt it: a spark of protection. An ounce of maternal feelings. A dizzying, sharp, heavy dose of fear.

If this were another world, and you had lived, perhaps you would have reached the sixth grade, where they taught you about these unspeakable horrors like they do the wars past. How humanity saw the destruction barreled down against Gaza and stopped it. How we came together and ensured human life was at the forefront. Perhaps the story would have some better ending, perhaps in another world there was someone strong enough to put a stop to this.

Perhaps in some other world none of it ever happened, and you would walk home from the school you died in on a sunny day, home to your family, with a half-eaten sandwich in your schoolbag, and the only worry being your homework.

But you lay ripped from the womb of your mother, rough against the rubble. We live in a world that functions this way, our lives nothing but the price white people pay for the American dream, or the Israeli colony, or the next big shopping market or army, whatever. You lay ripped from the womb of your mother, and the West wonders about the definition of a soul. What’s the definition of yours? Of a Palestinians? What is a life, if we bring it down to the term, if we reduce it to a sentence?

I do not know who you could have become. What you would have done. I do not know you, you sweet stranger, who was welcomed into heaven before even your first breath. But I’d like to imagine. Hey, listen, the God I grew up with, he taught us that babies who die young become birds in heaven. Are you flying?

Child, in America, the place that funds the bombs that killed you, they sit across from each other in heated discussions about the state of the world. As a Palestinian, as a fetus, tell me, do you have a soul? I don’t know, but the God I grew up with taught me that a soul is breathed into a fetus 90 days after conception. Come to me in my dreams, if so. Tell me you flew through heaven, if so. Tell me there is a future brighter than this one, if so.

I am sorry, child, for my eyes have become accustomed to the shouts of my kind and of the rubble of Palestine. If one or two things were different in my life trajectory, perhaps I’d have been the one holding you in my stomach, palms around you in protection, as I tried not to flinch at the sound of -

God has been far away from me, but I find myself whispering prayers, for you, for your mother, for your mothers’ mother, for the men that found you and pulled you into their palms, you tiny, small, beautiful, simple, innocent, painful thing.

The words have left me.

We have failed you.

With remorse,

Amal