"She sat before me. Her presence was not loud, but unbearable. She did not look tired, but ancient, like someone who had traveled not just for days but through time itself, through the centuries of betrayal that humanity has inflicted upon itself.
I said nothing. She said nothing. The silence held.
Then she whispered, “My feet and back hurt.”
What a simple phrase. And yet it carried the weight of exile.
My feet and back hurt.
Of course they did.
She had been carrying two children, a basket, and the unspoken grief of the earth.
“No, habibi. It’s from walking. We’ve been walking a long time.”
Walking. Such a gentle word for such a violent act. She had walked over corpses and rubble, over forgotten treaties and abandoned neighborhoods. She had walked across the graves of promises.
And I, me, a doctor. What could I do? Open a drawer? Offer a pill? I could not suture history. I could not anesthetize the world’s cruelty.
So I gave her painkillers. Like a priest sprinkling water on a burning house. And vitamins, why not? A placebo for the soul, perhaps more for mine than hers.
She stood, nodded, and left.
I should have returned to my notes, to the work. But I sat there, staring at my hands. Those impotent, trembling hands. I wondered if I had just witnessed something sacred or something obscene.
In her hands was a bundle of arugula. Earth still clung to the roots.
“This is for you,” she said.
I refused. My pride would not allow it. But pride dies in the presence of grace.
She insisted. “It’s from my heart,” she said. “We’re farmers. From Beit Lahia. We picked it before we left. I still have some.”
And in that moment, I saw her. Not the woman, but the truth.
So I took it. Not for the leaves, but to protect what little dignity remained in the world.
But she had left something behind. A scream without sound. A sermon without words.
And in that clinic, surrounded by antiseptics and broken instruments, I, the doctor, broke.
Not from pity. But from the unbearable truth that someone who had nothing still found a way to give everything.
-Ezzideen Shehab in Gaza 7/7/25 (source)
https://linktr.ee/ezzideenshehab
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