Malik Abu Shawish

[canvas snapping in a wind that smells of dust and generator fuel]

WHISPER

Malik Abu Shawish. Eight years old. Visiting his mother’s tent. The house was already gone; the tent was the new house; the drone did not update its dictionary.

They will call the tent a “site.” They will call the child “among the dead.” His grandfather, Hassan al-Hanagra, is in the same line of the hospital ledger. The mother lived. The news cycle moved.

Director: note the date. Years into the same industrial process, and the language has not improved. Still “strike.” Still “neighborhood.” Still an eight-year-old processed as remainder.

I file him beside Abdullah, not because they are interchangeable, but because the system keeps offering me the same age as if it were a coincidence.