Those Little Brown Hands

A letter to late six-year-old Palestinian-American, Wadea al-Fayoume.

Photo of Wadea al-Fayoume.

*Trigger warning*

Dearest Wadea,

I didn’t know you personally, but little one, you will forever be a point of light when I look up at the stars. In the gentle curve of your name, I find the same rhythm of an undulating ocean, waves that speak of ancient stories and future hopes. 

As a much younger man, I sought solace in the comforting cradle of religion. Its hymns, rituals, and promises of eternal love were like aloe to the wounds from a world that often felt too cruel, too indifferent. But when I began to better understand the role religion played in this world’s ailments, the weight of transgressions, both ancient and present — that bond frayed. No longer could I embrace deities that would ask that my praise take place on knees scraped raw.

But when I heard of your fate, Wadea, when I learned of the cruel snatching of your life, I found myself whispering to the cosmos once more. Hoping there's a God who might listen.

Tears flowed from the wells of my eyes, reflecting a pain that words could scarcely capture. When I was done crying, I prayed again, my voice a desperate plea into the void. Asking that something rekindles the ember of humanity, that somehow we might breathe warmth and compassion back into the human soul.

In the waning light of the day I read about your death, I found myself drawn to the window. As I sat with a heart heavy as the bruised clouds above, I imagined your small hands clutching onto the hem of life. 

Twenty-six. That's how many times, your parents’ landlord, Joseph Czuba pierced the delicateness of your existence, thread by thread, until the fabric of your being was torn asunder. Each strike a cruel reminder of the malice that can reside in the corners of the human heart. There's an indescribable agony in knowing the precision of such violence, especially against someone as young and tender as you.

As I write this, the ink feels heavy on the page, as though it too is burdened by the weight of your story. The world has a way of blurring pain into statistics, into numbers that can be easily digested and forgotten. But each of those twenty-six times is a universe in itself, a chapter in a story that was brutally cut short. But it’s necessary that we still read it.

A life that was just beginning to unfold, like the petals of a morning bloom. At just six-years-old, the world should have been a landscape of wonders, not a storm of hatred. That a man, a vessel of life's experiences and memories, could channel such dark animosity towards you and your mother, is a reflection not just of his own fractured soul but of the broken shards of our world. 

When he extinguished your earthly light, and left your mother teetering on the precipice of life and death, he did not see you. He did not see the laughter in your eyes, the potential in your heart, or the dreams you held for tomorrow. He saw only your Palestinian and Muslim heritage. The rage that boiled within him, stoked by the recent Israel and Hamas conflict, found its misdirected vent in you. You and your mother became the embodiment of his misguided anger, the scapegoats for a conflict far larger than either of you.

The air around the entire world should feel thick with your loss. The shadows in each room should stretch longer and deeper, as if trying to reach out to the void left by your absence. I hope that we all hear the wind outside whisper your name, and watch the earth mourn, too, crying for the dreams you never got to chase.

As I trace the patterns of light through the window shades, I think of your tears, Wadea. Tears that should have been for scraped knees and stolen toys, not for the cruel actions of a man lost in his own bigotry. While being affirmed by Western media and public figures. The sound of his venomous shouts, ‘you Muslims must die,’ pool like poison in the chambers of my soul, reminding me of the chasms of Islamophobia, xenophobia, and white supremacy, that continue to plague us.

Over the past few evenings, when the night becomes draped in its thickest robe, and the moonlight finds its way through the crevices of our fragmented hearts, I have found my thoughts traveling to you. Thinking about how the weight of the world is not measured in tons or pounds but in the silent heft of its unspoken sorrows. 

I watched the same sort of hatred that stole you, gnaw at the souls of many before.

My mind wanders to the years after September 11th, I see them as a cascade of autumn leaves, each carrying the weight of memory, each stained with the colors of loss, pain, and bigotry. Those years were both a testament to human resilience, and a mirror reflecting the worst of our sins.

I still remember the sky the day it happened — a brilliant blue, deceptively serene, juxtaposed against the smoke that would soon rise, turning day into night. I watched it all unfold from the cafeteria window of my school. In its aftermath, the world changed in ways both large and small. The loudness of hate drowned out the soft whispers of empathy. It was not just the towers that fell that day, Wadea; it was the walls around many hearts, replaced by barbed wire.

To be Muslim, to be brown, to be thought of as Middle Eastern, was to become “other”, “enemy”, “insurgent”, “terrorist.” Skin once seen by some as a kiss from the sun’s embrace, became a marker of perceived danger. But this bigotry did not rise in isolation; it was fed by the fertile soil of ignorance, watered by fear, and nurtured by the politics of division.

I saw shops with signs written in foreign languages close their doors, their dreams crushed under the weight of suspicion. I watched children, not much older than you, go home with bruises, their spirits broken by classmates now seeing them as a threat. Families, who had only ever known this land as home, felt they had to hide, to become invisible.

Your death lays bare the same treacherous ground we tread upon then, rising once more. The headlines with your name are a haunting, warning us of the impending storm, of the hate that consumed us post September 11th, openly showing its fangs again. Though, that hate never truly dissipated — it simply simmered. Waiting for the perfect cocktail of grief, disinformation, and political maneuvering. 

The public outcry following your death, the denunciations, and statements of grief from figures like Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden, while necessary, felt eerily juxtaposed against the backdrop of a growing sentiment that children who look like you don’t matter.

Following Hamas's terror in Israel, the machinery of surveillance and suspicion was set into motion, targeting specific communities. Your community. Reports suggest that the FBI made its presence felt in Palestinian households and mosques across the nation. This was not an isolated initiative but rather part of a broader narrative being painted across media outlets. These brown people are evil.

In American politics, leaders too often choose rhetoric that whips up fear rather than fostering understanding. When politicians wield words like “eliminate,” “eradicate,” and “level” without discernment, they blur the lines between a militant group like Hamas and innocent Palestinians. They not only misrepresent an entire people but also contribute to the climate that encourages harm to innocent lives.

But this is a calculated decision against a people they believe can be sacrificed for their political agenda.

Nikki Haley, former U.N. Ambassador and aspirant for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, declared, “This is sick, and we have to treat sick people the way they deserve to be treated and eliminate them.” Such language is not only reductionist but dangerously incendiary.

Similarly, another 2024 hopeful, Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, in a campaign event, made a sweeping generalization, saying, “If you look at how [people in Gaza] behave, not all of them are Hamas, but they are all anti-Semitic,” This kind of rhetoric erases the complexities and nuances of an entire population, painting them with a broad and prejudiced brush.

Governor Kathy Hochul, in the wake of addressing the concerns of Jewish New Yorkers, faced an inquiry about her stance towards Palestinian New Yorkers. These individuals were gripped with anxiety for their kin in Gaza, with Israel poised to initiate its operations in the region. To this, Hochul's response was singularly focused, urging "law-abiding Palestinians to reject Hamas." The nuanced fears and concerns of Palestinian-Americans in her state went unanswered, leaving a void of acknowledgment.

Then, on the eve of your tragic death, the airwaves were rife with panic over a supposed “Day of Jihad,” a call purportedly made by a Hamas leader. Schools shuttered their doors, communities tensed, and fears burgeoned, all stemming from the rhetoric of commentators and politicians. And when this day passed with little incident, the echoes of their alarmist claims remained. It's likely that the same fearmongering played a role in inciting the individual who took your life, a testament to the profound and often tragic consequences of words recklessly thrown into the wind.

In the pointed fingers of the media and at the podiums of political power, a haunting refrain can be heard: Muslims, Arabs, and brown people are the shadows, the silhouettes against which the world measures its righteousness. As if history has looped back to the days after September 11th, painting you all with the strokes of villainy. To them, your blood appears as ink on a ledger, a necessary expenditure in the relentless calculation of vengeance and aspiration.

I'm so deeply sorry. I wish I could offer you every apology the world has ever uttered, but it would still not be enough. Not for a world stubborn in its amnesia, that failed to heed the lessons from the hate-ravaged ashes of September 11th. A world that, time and time again, reveals its selective humanity, choosing which lives to cradle and which to cast aside, as if souls are mere pebbles, differentiated only by how far you can toss them.

Wadea, I mourn for the countless horizons you'll never see, for the melodies of life you'll never hear, and the story of experiences you'll never write. Every child is a reminder of the boundless possibilities of existence, and now, the world stands deprived of the wonders you might have unveiled.

As I continue to pen these words to you, amidst the sorrowful symphony of this world, I want to hope — even if against hope — that you have found a realm where peace does not have to be fought for, where it's as natural as the air, as gentle as the touch of a loved one. I envision a place where pain is an alien concept, and the only tears that exist are those of joy, merging with the radiant glow of a perpetual golden hour.

The tragedies of this world, the harsh lines drawn by borders, the colors that divided humanity into fragments — may they all be but distant whispers to you now. I hope you've found a sanctuary where love is the language, where you are seen for the brilliant soul you are, unhindered by earthly identities.

I will continue to think of you, Wadea, in all the stories that were never told. Your name will forever be sacred in my heart and on my pen. My hope is that we, as keepers of this world, finally understand the gravity of our choices and the price of our silence. And strive, with every ounce of our being, to create a world worthy of the spirits like yours. 

Dear child, may you find beauty beyond anything we can fathom.

God, if you're indeed the expanse that envelops our cries and the silence that absorbs our prayers, hear this plea: No more Wadeas. No more tales of lifeless little hands. 

With Love,

Frederick