Poems from the children of Gaza (2)

At West England Bylines we believe that it is vitally important to share the experiences of ordinary Palestinian people in Gaza. Here is the second in our series of re-published poems by Gazan children.

We asked Hala, whose poem is featured above, to tell us about herself. She replied:

“Hi everybody, I am Hala Mohammed Aqel, 17 years old, a Gazan girl from Gaza – Palestine, and I am very proud that I’m Palestinian. I’m the eldest child in my family, and I have one brother and two young sisters. Before the war, I lived in the north of the Gaza Strip, Gaza City, Al-Karama neighborhood. But when this barbaric war started, we had to displace to many places, and now I’m displaced in our farm in the Al-Mawasi area – Khan Younis city, in the south of the Gaza Strip.

I’m really interested in engineering, especially Artificial Intelligence Engineering. I hope that I can one day become a successful person in my field of work and work in the largest and most famous companies in the world, such as Google, Microsoft, and others.

I really find comfort in writing. Through my words, I hope to share who I was, who I am now, and who I dream of becoming once again. And I hope to become a great and famous author and have many wonderful books and poems. I write to leave a beautiful impact on this big world.”

The West England Bylines team are very grateful to the The Hands Up Project for giving us permission to share these poems with our readers. The Hands Up Project is an organisation devoted to connecting young Palestinian people with children around the world. Using drama, poetry and story-telling, the project provides opportunities for shared self-expression, creativity and mutual understanding for children traumatised by war. Each poem here is from the projects’ collection Oh Big Blue.

Yazan, who wrote the poem above, lives in northern Gaza. He describes his ambition in life as ‘to help the people of Gaza and others in need everywhere’.