When pain paralyses your heart and grief tears at your soul you scream to God for the power to turn back time. You wish it could have been you who was taken, not your child. Not the child you brought into this world with the wish that their lives could be better than yours, the child you prayed would one day taste a freedom you have never known. The child whose battered and bleeding body you held in your arms for the last time. The child you couldn’t say goodbye to. The child you couldn’t protect.

The child. The children.

Photo: Mofeed Nasser.  Gaza