One, two, three days, we speak of you, my children, dying in agony under the rubble of your homeland, and cries of horror go up, out of our genuine compassion, but also out of the dread question rippling just under the surface of our frantic condemnations: are we next, are we next, are we next? Are we next if we speak out against your murderers, or are we next if we don’t? One day, two, three: then we begin to shut out our rage and fear and sorrow, then we turn our hearts to stone, like cave-trolls flinging themselves into relentless sunshine for the sheer blessedness of hearing nothing, seeing nothing, feeling nothing. Your torn bodies bring not a shudder then but a grimace and a word perhaps of facile sympathy that has not behind it even the desire to act. One, two days, three, perhaps, and we switch off your pain, because if you perish at the hands of the same horror for a whole month, then, well, you do become a little routine, a little boring, one more tragedy to cluck over while we have dinner and mourn the state of the world. We would drop everything now, all of us, and rush to the aid of a child frightened by a bug, but when your coloniser brings down whole buildings upon your heads we just watch your family picking up the pieces, eyes glazing over, because, no, we feel no urgent overwhelming need to protect you, though we have seen and heard you begging us for the right to live, for the right to be free of this torment. One, two, three days, and then you are only blurred pixels and snatches of mutable sound to us, like made-up terrors in a film we can fast-forward, like characters in a sad story that happened long ago and far away, once upon a time. You are not quite real to us, my children. You are not quite human.

Hibah Shabkhez is a writer of the half-yo literary tradition, an erratic language-learning enthusiast, and a happily eccentric blogger from Lahore, Pakistan. Her work has previously appeared in Rougarou, Backstory Journal, Porridge Magazine, Boats Against The Current, Panoplyzine, Five Minutes, and a number of other literary magazines. Linktree: https://linktr.ee/HibahShabkhez