Phalapoem editor, 13/02/2025
(The air is thick with dust and sorrow. Buildings reduced to skeletons, streets littered with rubble and broken dreams. But amidst the ruin, there is movement. A weary donkey, ribs showing, hooves cracked, carries a wounded child on its back. At its side walks a barefoot boy, his hands in fists, his back forever turned to the world. The donkey stops, lowering itself to the ground as the child is carefully lifted away. Handala steps closer, his voice quiet but firm.)
Handala: You don’t stop, do you? Bombs fall, fires rage, and yet… you keep moving.
NGD: (ears flicking, voice deep with wisdom) If I stop, who will carry them? If I stop, who will take the wounded to the last doctor still breathing? Who will bring bread to the mother hiding in the ruins? Who will walk where the world refuses to go?
Handala: The world does refuse, doesn’t it? It closes its eyes, locks its doors, turns its back…
NGD: (a tired sigh) The world’s silence is heavier than any load I have ever carried. But I do not wait for them. My hooves were made for movement. My heart beats to serve. When water runs dry and food is stolen, I keep walking. Because my people walk. And I am one of them.
Handala: The rulers of the world—powerful men in suits, with their polished speeches and empty hands—history will not remember them kindly. But you… history will write your name.
NGD: (a small chuckle, weary but warm) History does not know the names of donkeys, Handala.
Handala: It will now. It will write that when the world turned away, Gaza’s donkeys turned toward. That in the genocide of 2023-2025, the rulers built walls, and the donkeys carried the people over them. That in the hunger, in the siege, when engines failed and fuel disappeared, the donkeys moved when no one else would. That in the face of war, you were more human than the humans who ruled it.
NGD: (bowing its head slightly) I do not need history’s ink, Handala. The gratitude in a child’s embrace, the whispered prayer of an old man as I carry him to safety, the gentle touch of a girl’s hands as she feeds me her last piece of bread—these are my rewards. I do not carry for recognition. I carry because I must.
Handala: That is what makes you noble. That is why you are the Nobel Gaza Donkey.
(A long silence stretches between them. Somewhere in the distance, a drone hums—a vulture in the sky. But NGD does not flinch. Handala does not move. They stand together, symbols of a people who refuse to be broken. One with hooves, one with bare feet, both walking the same road.)
NGD: Will you walk with me, Handala?
Handala: I have always been walking. And I will never stop.
(And so, they continue forward, through the ruins, through the grief, through the war-torn streets of a land that still dares to hope.)
