‘They Can’t Take The Sea From US’
A Vast Sea, and a Narrow Water
By Ibrahim Isam
The sea was wide enough to carry the dreams of an entire city, yet in Gaza, it seemed narrower than a child’s dream.
Three children stood in the water, close together, as though sharing a secret they did not want the wind to overhear. No net. No boat. No fishing rod. Only scraps of fishing line they had gathered from abandoned nets along the shore, trying to turn what was left behind into a path toward a fish.
Perhaps they were fishing for fish.
Or perhaps they were fishing for something else.
Something that looked like tomorrow.
The sea stretched open to the horizon, yet they could not go far. A cruel contradiction: To see the road before you and still be unable to take it; to stand before endless water while life itself grows narrower for those who belong to it.
In the old stories, the sea was a passage into the unknown. Ships crossed it in search of a homeland, salvation, or a new beginning.
But these children had only a few meters of water, a broken thread, and a very small wish:
to return with something they could eat.
And still, they laughed.
Perhaps because children do not know surrender in the way adults do.
They see the water.
They see the fish.
They see the hand of a friend.
And they see, beyond the horizon, a place they cannot understand why they are forbidden to reach.
Perhaps innocence begins with this simple question:
Why can’t I go farther?
Perhaps peace begins there, too.
Peace is not a word written on walls, nor a promise postponed until tomorrow. Peace is a child being able to enter the sea without fear; carrying a real fishing net instead of a broken thread; returning home with a fish in his hands—not because that fish will change the world, but because it will tell him that life is still possible.
They walk through the water, step by step, as if teaching the sea itself the meaning of patience.
They do not ask for much.
Only a small piece of the sea,
and a larger space in which to live.
For freedom, in its simplest form, may be nothing more than reaching your hand toward the horizon without anyone telling you where you must stop.
And still, the sea remains vast…
So vast that it makes injustice seem narrower, harsher, and more absurd.
And the children remain in the water:
three small bodies,
three soaked dreams,
three little hands searching for a fish…
or for a tomorrow in which they can finally say:
The sea belonged to all of us.
CrossFireArabia
