U.S. Muslim Children Speak in Poetry: We are one with the People of Gaza

Imam Badi Ali, New Trend Magazine, Feb. 12, 2008

February 9, 2008 --The youth committee of the Islamic Center of the Triad [ICT] met at Borders Books in Greensboro for a poetry reading session titled "To Gaza with Love." Fifteen children read poems during this one hour program. Some of the poems were very brief but evocative. Here are two of them:

How Our People Live

I look up!
The beautiful sky is smeared with a Jet fighter's trail!
I look at the Horizon!
An ugly monster of steel is rumbling towards us!
Father! Mother! Where are you!
I am scared!
Ya Allah! Make me strong!

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Gaza's Flowers

Little boys and girls
Withering like flower petals
Parents look at them with tearless eyes
Slow creeping hunger and thirst crawls like a snake
Then came the news
The wall is down
thousands crossed into Rafah, the other Rafah
I see my mother opening a bag of flour
Perhaps our flowers will smile again