Student short story entry to the George Orwell Prize, on the theme of Freedom is . . .
A literature piece by Dalal Abu Diab 12B
The playground is dust and concrete, a rectangle of space carved between high walls, lined with wire. The sun beats down on the boys as they run, their feet kicking up the dust, their laughter cutting through the dry air. My father is among them, a boy of ten, all energy and sweat, his heart racing from the chase.
A ball flies through the air, and he leaps to meet it with his foot. For a moment, there is nothing but sky. Then, a sound cracks through the air, something sharper than thunder, heavier than a stone dropped in water.
Gas.
The warning ripples through the group like lightning, striking dry grass. The boys do not wait; they go through the motions. They scatter, instinct pushing them toward the school building, toward the edges of the playground where there might be cover, towards that cornered wall their oppressors are so keen on keeping up. My father runs, the dust churning beneath his shoes, his lungs pulling in breath just as the first sting laces the air.
It seeps in fast—thick, burning, invisible fingers clawing into their throats, their eyes. His legs move faster, but the gas moves faster still, curling into his skin, slipping beneath his eyelids. He stumbles.
A new sound breaks through the haze, distinct from the chaos—the crack of gunfire, sharp and deliberate. The soldiers do not aim at the children, not for now, at least. They shoot into the sky, into the walls, into the spaces just above their heads, into the gaps in society where Palestinians are forced to live. The message is clear. Run. Scatter. Be afraid.
Someone is screaming, but it is hard to tell who; multiple people could be screaming, but it is impossible to care. The air is full of noise now—shouting, commands barked in a language that does not belong, boots slamming against pavement.
The soldiers move with precision, their rifles slung over their shoulders, the same as always. A faceless machine of control, of punishment, of reminders.
The school bell rings, an absurdity in the chaos, a sound meant for order now swallowed by disorder. A teacher is yelling for them to get inside, but my father cannot see, cannot breathe. He blinks furiously, his face slick with something more than sweat. His chest is on fire. The ball still sits in the middle of the playground, forgotten.
He feels someone grab his arm, pulling him forward. His friend, Jawad, laughs breathlessly through the pain, a desperate sound, more hysteria than joy. They do not stop running until they reach his mother’s arms, her hands gripping his face, searching, searching, scolding, for being at school so provocatively.
It will be over soon. It is always over soon. And then the soldiers will leave, their gas canisters spent, their message delivered. The boys will return to the playground, though the dust will settle slower, their steps more cautious. The ball will be retrieved. The game will begin again.
The teachers will not speak of it. The students will not ask.
It is not the first time. It will not be the last.
Thirty years later, the air is sterile, the beeping of machines an unnatural rhythm. The hardened East Jerusalemite looks upon the stretcher, but he does not see a dying man. He sees the ten-year-old Jawad, still gripping his arm, still running through the dust and the gas, still laughing despite the pain.
The metallic smell of antiseptic does nothing to mask the thick iron tang of blood. It drips from the stretcher, pooling onto the floor, collecting in the treads of a nurse’s rubber soles.
The body on the stretcher is barely recognizable. His friend—the boy who had once pulled him through the gas—lies still. His skull is split open, the soft tissue of his brain glistening beneath the harsh fluorescent lights. The bullet that shattered him clatters onto the floor like metal rain, rolling into the corner of the room, forgotten.
The doctor does not look up. The nurse wipes the blood as if it is routine, because it is routine. The room does not mourn. The machine of control, of punishment, of reminders, has done its work again.
My father does not breathe. He cannot. The same suffocating feeling, the same burn in his throat, the same sting behind his eyelids. The gas, the gun, the hands grabbing him, pulling him forward—it is all the same. The years have only changed the weapons.
A soldier in the hospital corridor leans against the wall, shifting his rifle, bored. The same uniform, the same boots from all those years ago. The same men, with different faces. A system built to oppress, to remind, to control. It was never just about force. It was about making them feel small, feel watched, feel that their childhood, their laughter, their very presence on the land was something that could be taken from them at any moment. Their condition was conditional.
A sharp voice breaks through the thick silence, a form of disrespect in itself. “Sir, we need a police report.” My father turns. Two officers stand before him, their gazes flicking between him and the stretcher.
One of them holds his red travel document between gloved fingers, as if it carries something contagious. The pressure of his grip smears the ink, blurring the name of a family rooted in this land for generations, just as it distorts the words Travel Document—a term that grants movement, but never belonging. My father is not written in ink, nor carved into history; he is the space between the words, the breath between syllables, the absence where certainty should be.
A passport is for a citizen, the way a driver’s license affirms a driver. But he is not worthy of the eight-letter word. What he gets is a connective, a liminal phrase, a permission always subject to revision. He is handed a document that is not a document any more than a slap in the face is a gift. The red, tattered paper sits between their fingers like a joke without a punchline, like proof of everything he is not.
Jawad carried the same stack of papers, the red on the cover a symbol of the blood that stained their history, their streets, their very existence. It was not a passport, not a claim to a nation, not a shield of rights—it was a reminder, a quiet mockery bound in fragile paper. Like my father, he was not worthy of the eight-letter word. He was given pages that did not name him, only permitted him, as one permits cargo to move, as one permits the temporary.
The soldier’s other hand rests on his holster, fingers tapping idly.
“Can you confirm the deceased’s relation to you?” The officer barely looks up from his clipboard, his tone clipped, devoid of empathy—just another box to check, another inconvenience to process.
My father does not answer immediately. He is still looking at Jawad, still seeing the boy who once ran beside him.
The officer exhales sharply, tapping his pen against the clipboard, his patience wearing thin. “Answer the question.”
“He was my classmate,” my father finally says, his voice hollow.
The officer snorts, glancing at his partner, the corners of his mouth twitching in something too bitter to be amusement. “And you? Where were you when the shooting occurred?”
The implication lingers, heavy as the blood still pooling beneath the stretcher. Where were you? What were you doing? Should we be filling out another report with your name instead?
He knows this game too well. Knows the drill, the script, the lines rehearsed by men who see Palestinians not as people but as problems to be solved. Knows that his presence, his accent, his very existence makes him suspect by default. He exhales slowly, the weight of three decades pressing against his ribs.
“I was here,” he says. “Watching him die.”
The officer stares at him, expression unreadable, but there’s something in the silence that lingers too long, something dark and knowing. His pen scratches against paper. Another name recorded, another death filed away, another body that will never matter.
He flicks the red travel document back toward my father, uninterested. Like a dealer folding a losing hand. “You can go.”
My father does not take it right away. His fingers feel stiff, cold. When he finally does, it feels heavier than it should—like dead weight, like proof of everything he isn’t allowed to be.
Then, he sees it. The officer’s hand, the same one that just tossed his existence back to him like a discarded receipt. The fingers, the nails—dark crescents of dried blood packed beneath them. Jawad’s blood. His blood. The remnants of the bullet he himself had to pick up, had to wipe clean before it could be turned into evidence, before it could become something criminal.
A thought snakes through him, cold and certain. I could grab his wrist right now. Slam his face into the linoleum. I could knock his teeth in, hear them clatter against the floor like spent shells. I could make him choke on his own paperwork, let his skull crack open against the desk like Jawad’s did against the curb.
He pictures it in vivid detail—the officer on the ground, his pristine uniform dark with his own blood, his pen rolling uselessly across the floor. My father sees himself pressing his boot against the man’s throat, asking, Where were you when the shooting happened? Answer the question.
He lets the fantasy linger for a moment, lets it wash over him like a wave pulling him under. Then, he swallows it down.
He takes the document. He takes the weight. He takes the blood beneath the officer’s nails and lets it become another thing he will carry.
The officer wipes his hand against his pants, smearing the stain deeper into the fabric, then turns away, already moving on to the next task, the next nameless body, the next case to close. Jawad is just another statistic. Just another body they will call neutralized.
My father tightens his grip on the flimsy red document, his fingers trembling, and steps back into the light.
Freedom is a word that shifts in the mouth, a shape no one can agree upon. To some, it is a flag waving in the wind, a line drawn on a map, a right inherited at birth. To others, it is the space between fences, the silence before a siren, the breath held at a checkpoint.
Freedom is the right to resist, but resistance is terrorism, and terrorism is not freedom. Freedom is walking through your own streets without papers in your pocket, without your name in a database, without a gun pointed at your back. Freedom is dignity, but dignity is dangerous. Freedom is existence, but existence is conditional.
For men like my father, like Jawad, like all the ones who came before them, freedom has always been a question, never an answer. Freedom is a bureaucracy of exclusion, a form that can be denied, a number that can be erased. They will say he is free to move, but only within the lines they have drawn. They will say he is free to speak, but only in the language of the occupied. They will say he is free to live, but only if he does not resist.
Because freedom is for citizens, and my father is not a citizen.
Freedom is a document that doesn’t exist. It is the paper he was never handed, the passport he was never deemed worthy of, the proof of belonging that will never bear his name. It is a stamp that will never press against his page, a right always revoked before it is granted.
Freedom is Jawad, but Jawad is dead.