‘I want to bury my son whole!’, booms a man’s voice. A dog passes. A child’s hand clenched tight between its teeth. Samir, who has been digging a well with a tin cup for a shovel for hours with not a drop of water to show for his efforts, is not disgusted.

His dopamine levels are too high to register any horror. He feels it in his gut. This will be it today! He abandons his well building project. At 8 years old his goal in life is to perform one act of kindness a day. True to what he promised his grandfather. Only a life of service is a life of contented pride. Samir leaves the sauna. Determined. He will catch the dog!

He knows not what a sauna is, but he knows his mum calls their tent a sauna. It could be Finnish for tent. Mum knows so many things, but knowing is not the same as doing. It’s skill and courage that completes quests in the service of the land!

The dog is fast. Tail up. Happy. Proud. Other dogs follow to sneak a peak at the little treat with five soft fingers. The father is chasing the dog, sometimes stopping to throw a rock at the four legged thief. ‘I want to bury my son whole, I want to bury my son whole!’

A young woman who doesn’t know the man and didn’t know the little boy, drops to her knees. Her nails open her own cheeks. ‘Why don’t they simply nuke us? Why drag out this agony? Why?’

Samir tells her: ‘Fear not, honourable princess, rise! I will settle this!’ He makes a mental note to inquire what ‘nukes’ are later.

Samir is not unarmed. He has a sword. Well, a steel rod he found in a collapsed building. Samir has not an ounce of fat on his little body and he is fast as lightening. He catches up with the dog and smashes the dog’s skull in. ‘Die you wicked rogue!’ The other dogs whimper and disperse.

The father retrieves his son’s hand.

He kisses Samir on his forehead and his two shoulders.

Samir runs back to the tent his mum calls ‘sauna’.

‘Mummy, mummy, today I was knighted!’

His mother tells him he is more than a knight, he is a king. A king who will always provide for his subjects.

Samir can’t believe it. He went from man-at-arms to knight to king in one day!!

The next day Samir the King brings a small jar of water to his mum. Even prouder than yesterday. It’s not even half a liter, but he’s carried off this small treasure in spite of artillery rounds exploding all around him. It’s water with a reddish color. He looks at his mum and says: ‘Now I can pluck flowers for you and you can put them in water!’

He is making odd wheezing sounds with every breath. From all the running, yes, but sadly, that’s not the whole reason.

A tiny piece of schrapnel has made his lungs fill up with blood.

Samir’s last words are: ‘Something bit me.’

His mother kisses his lifeless body all over and screams: ‘Why did we teach you to care? You were enough! You were always the whole world!’

Only in Gaza does a mother regret crowning her son.