I speak with my corpse in Gaza.

I am now a corpse in Gaza.

But I am still speaking.

Death in Gaza is strange; it is not an end, but another form of life. Here, bodies do not die all at once; they die multiple times: once when the rocket falls, once when the world denies the news, once when the child is buried without a name, and many times when the conscience does not stir.

I am a corpse, yes, but I am not without a voice; I speak to myself, to my fragments, to my limbs scattered like harsh memories. I speak because silence is betrayal, and because silence is a death more horrific than this one that clings to me.

I was walking on Salah al-Din Street, carrying a bag of bread. I was not a fighter, I was not a politician; I was just a human wanting to live. But in Gaza, the desire to live is a crime, and standing on your feet is an act of resistance.

Death came to me from above, from planes that know us by name, programmed for our bodies, not for maps. Death in Gaza is precise, calculated, cold. A technological death, executed by "advanced democracies" at the touch of a button. They said I was "collateral damage," but I was a complete world, I was a small dream, and a pain greater than all the United Nations data.

I am a corpse now, and I talk to myself, asking: Will my mother see me? Will she recognize me among the rubble? Will she search for my severed foot, or will she lift my head and sing to me as she used to when I was a child?

I address the world:

Why are you at ease? Why do you eat quietly while we disintegrate? Why do you read this text as if it were fiction, while I am here, lying under a cloud of smoke? Is it because I am Palestinian? Or because I am from Gaza? Or because my death does not resemble yours, so you cannot feel me? I am a corpse, yes, but I carry the questions of the living; I pose them to you, to those who justify, to those who remain silent, and to those who balance between the killer and the victim.

Do I not have a name?

Do I not have a homeland?

Did I not write, laugh, get angry, love, fear, learn?

Was I not like you, before a shell shattered me?

Do not wait for your death to understand mine.

And do not wait for your corpses to hear my voice.

I am now a corpse in Gaza, but I speak, and all the corpses of Gaza speak. I am a corpse, perhaps a child or a woman, perhaps a young man or a paramedic, perhaps an old man killed in the bread line, perhaps a poet buried in the coffin of poetry, perhaps a journalist whose eyes were blown out by the camera's lens. I am a corpse without a family, without relatives or friends; they all left, vanished, and I remain alone searching for a living person to talk to me and guide me to a graveyard.

In Gaza, there are corpses that still speak, weep, witness, curse, and there are living people outside Gaza who resemble the dead, mastering the art of numbness, leaning on the benches of neutrality, as if oppression does not concern them, or as if they have become silent corpses. How many have lost their souls without a bullet being fired at them? They died when the conscience died, and they died when blood became a political detail on the news.

How many corpses there are in the world, corpses that walk on two feet and smile to avoid being exposed, their faces illuminated, and their hearts extinguished for years. They are in quiet cities, in luxurious offices, in forgotten villages, in alleys, in classrooms, and in the shattered mirrors of bathrooms, living without meaning, without hope, without love, without a cause.

I speak to my corpse to help me lift the rubble and gather the remnants of my body: rise, my corpse, there is no one left but us under the dirt and cement, or in this cell. Rise, the Day of Resurrection has come, look, the resurrection has begun, the crossings have opened, and bread has fallen, and the Arabs and their eternal message have emerged from the refrigerators of the dead.

 Rise, my corpse, they will build you a monument in the city, and a beautiful mural colored with purple blood, and thinkers will write the literature of tragedy, and win international awards in your name