No Space to be a Child

I am a Palestinian whose family lived for generations in the village of Al-Maghar. Sixty years ago, during the Nakbah (Catastrophe), my grandparents and their whole family were expelled from Al-Maghar, uprooted and sent to the huts and narrow streets of a refugee camp 100 miles away. After sixty years, still they taste the bitterness of that loss and watch helplessly as the flames of that tragedy continue to burn. As a small child I was used to living in one of the huts in the refugee camp, but as I got older and became aware of the discontent inside my family, I would pester my father with questions:

Why do we not have a garden?

Why does the roof always leak in winter?

Why do we go to school without having a breakfast or pocket money?

Why do all ten of us sleep in one room?

Why do we have no heating in our house or school?

Why does our classroom have 50 students in one small space?

Why do we not have a playground? Where can I get clean water?

Why do we not travel anywhere?

Why do we hear booming sounds throughout the night?

Will the roar of the bulldozer come towards us today?

Who has been killed today?

Why do you let the soldiers humiliate you at the checkpoints?

Do all human beings live like us?