3:45 PM @wahaj_bani_moufleh She was lying in front of me, wrapped in the Palestinian flag, as if the homeland that never protected her in life was trying to embrace her in death. An orphaned child, who lost her father before she could even pronounce the word “dad,” and now she follows him, far too young for death, but heavy with the wounds of a homeland that never did justice to her.
As I looked at her through my lens, I felt the world stop for a moment. How can a child who knew so little of life carry all this sorrow in her farewell? How can her innocence be so brutally snatched away? Her shroud was white, and the Palestinian flag covered her, but she looked as though she was just sleeping, waiting for a hand to pull her out of this hell.
I was taking photos, but my heart wasn’t a camera. It was a father’s, a brother’s, a child’s heart searching for an explanation for this injustice. This child, who never found the security of a father in her life, never found the security of the world either. They left her alone, just as she had lived in her orphanhood.
Her image will never leave my memory. She is not just a picture; she is a testimony to a crime that cannot be forgiven. It’s as if she is telling me and the world: “I am not just a child they killed, I am the story of a homeland, I am innocence stolen, I am a soul that will never be forgotten.” 
