As I am writing this I am 100 percent sure that somewhere under the rubble in Gaza there is at the very least one child younger than 6, wounded, cold, stuck, but alive. Some time this night that child will die. Its last thought will be about mum and dad and why mum and dad are not picking her up. If she is old enough to have learned how to pray she will be begging God over and over again to please get her out of this bubble of pain. She will be trembling, she will try to wiggle free and by doing so will scratch herself on sharp edges of rubble. She will feel hunger and most of all thirst. She will long for a glass of water like never before in her life. Nobody will come to bring her water. She will also feel the strange sensation of having one hand missing. When she moves her arm it feels eerily lighter now.

The wound will be covered by dust. There is so much pain she doesn’t know about all the places she is wounded. For example, her left ear is gone and she will die without ever noticing. The pain in other areas is much more demanding. Though she is bleeding some, she will die from a combination of dehydration and hypothermia. In the last stages of her ordeal she will mercifully start having visions of her parents and siblings as they are calling her to join them for dinner in her favorite restaurant, everyone smiling. In a few days rescue workers will finally drag her tiny mangled body out from under the debris. An aunt will receive the news and will drop the phone and collapse on her knees. The aunt will later that day read online that the bombing of Gaza is not as bad as the bombing of Dresden. The aunt will scratch herself till she bleeds, because she can’t take the world’s apathy, with its absurd focus on inane historical comparisons and the hammer blows of her grief. Last night I dreamt with my eyes open that a child pulled the covers off me. It felt intensely real. The dead children in Gaza are forcing me to look. The comfort and security I have spent my whole life building. It’s a hollow lie until all of us are safe

Written on the 6th of December 2023, the day quite a few European kids got gifts from Saint Nicholas