Just imagine for a moment. A place where every child's morning starts with the question: will I be alive by evening or not? Where playing means playing with stones, and laughing means forgetting what happened yesterday. This is not a story. This is Gaza. And the children here are those innocents whose smiles are still alive, but helpless.
Those children who get tired before they grow up
In Gaza, you can't measure a child's age by the date. There, no one is five years old, no one is ten years old. There, children live through one war, then another, then another. At five, they know the difference between the sound of a drone and the sound of a bomb. At ten, they remember when their house was blown up last time. And at fifteen, their eyes have a tiredness that even an old person shouldn't have.
These children are not growing up. They are just surviving. And those who survive carry a burden on their shoulders that no human being should have to carry.

The world behind the broken walls

The pictures of Gaza we see are just rubble. But behind that rubble, there is a whole world. There, children search for their dolls among pieces of concrete. There, girls gather their notebooks so they can go to school tomorrow, if the school is still standing. There, children sit inside tents and remember the names of their friends who are no longer there.
These children are not different from us. They like chocolate too. They like watching cartoons too. They want cake on their birthdays too. The only difference is that their chocolate is covered in dust, their cartoons are on a broken TV, and on their birthdays there is no cake, just a prayer that they get another birthday.

And now the thing that hurts the most. The children of Gaza smile. Yes, they smile. In their smile, there is a helplessness that makes your eyes well up. When a child waves at the camera, when a girl shows her broken doll, when a boy stands on the rubble and makes a peace sign, that smile becomes a question on our conscience.
This smile is not weakness. This is courage. This is an answer to a world that has forgotten them. It says: you can break our homes, you can break our dreams, but you cannot break our spirit.
In Gaza, not every mother's lap is empty, but every mother's lap is certainly scared. She sleeps holding her child to her chest, so that if something happens at night, she can feel it. She says her child's name like she is reciting a prayer. She runs her hand through his hair and wonders whose hair these hands will touch tomorrow.
And the mothers who have lost their children, no one can write their story. The emptiness in their eyes does not fit into any newspaper headline. It is just a scream that echoes forever, but there is no one to hear it.
The games of Gaza's children have changed now. Earlier they played cricket in the alley, now they climb piles of rubble. Earlier they flew kites, now they just look at the sky and wonder if a helicopter is coming. Earlier they played hide and seek, now they hide in real life.
This is not childhood. This is the funeral of childhood. And the children who pass through this funeral are never whole again. They do grow up, but somewhere inside, they remain broken.

What is our responsibility?

Now the question is: what can we, sitting thousands of miles away from this war, do? We cannot rebuild their homes. We cannot bring their parents back. We cannot heal their wounds. But there is one thing we can do: we cannot forget them.
We can listen to their stories. We can look at their pictures. We can remember their names. We can raise our voice for them. We can carry their smiles to a world that does not want to see them.
This is little, but it is better than nothing. And as long as we remember them, they are not alone.

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These children are not growing up. They are just surviving. And those who survive carry a burden on their shoulders that no human being should have to carry.

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Humanity · StoryWhy I Wrote Gaza Diary: A Story of a Pen, a Voice of Conscience – Shahab Khan↗

One last thing
Behind the broken walls of Gaza, the children who are there are a mirror to our humanity. Their helpless smiles tell us that there is still something left in this world that is not broken. And as long as that smile remains, there is hope.
Maybe we cannot do anything big for them. But we can do this: we can see them. Really see them. Without looking away. Without trying to forget. Because the day we stop seeing them, that day we lose our own humanity.
And don't say, "What can we do?" Every time you tell someone their story, every time you pray for them, every time you stop and look at their picture, you are doing something. And that something, for the smiles of those children, is a lot.