Tag Archives: Palestine

When Ghosts Gather

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In this infinite space, silence is deafening, darkness thick as black strap molasses, and stinks of burning sulphur. 

Who are you? 
Where are we? 
I don’t know. 
You, dead like me? 
Yes, I’m Ibrahim, I’m Palestinian, and you? 
Ukrainian. I’m Victor and dead, along with my family, since 1933. I’ve not seen or spoken with another … I was going to say person, for years. Why meet you now? 
No idea. Are we ghosts? 
Must be. 
Ghosts. Bit of a shock. Where is here? 
No idea. 
You, died in1933? Impossible. This is 2025; you look thirty, like me. 
Maybe, time doesn’t exist here. 
How did you die? 
Genocide. Starvation, on the orders of Stalin, along with four million other Ukrainians in the Holodomor. 
Why? 
We disobeyed him. And your death? 
Genocide, just like you, along with my family and many thousands of other Palestinians were starved to death by Netanyahu’s Israeli government. 
Why? 
It’s a long story. In 1947, Britain and its allies, who’d defeated Fascism gave away Palestine, our country, our land, out of guilt for not stopping Hitler from murdering millions of Jewish people. Our land was stolen and now they call us the thieves.
We still fight Russia for our freedom. Stalin then, Putin now. He’s a murderous dictator and wants to re-establish the USSR’s empire. He claims Ukraine belongs to the Russian Federation and he’s waging war to steal it from us. We have a lot in common like killing our children.
Cynical bastards it kills tomorrow’s freedom fighters. 
Where are they, our dead children?  
Lost like us? 
Ghosts, yes. Lost? No. 
I wish.
Listen! Ibrahim shouts 
Look! Victor gasps. 

Fresh air swirls. Darkness vanishes. The void fills with twilight. The ghosts of children beyond number materialise; they are all intact as they were before their murder; babies are carried. The massed children chant, Peace! Justice! War no more!

Victor and Ibrahim gape as two girls walk forward.
Father, the first child speaks.
Is that you, My love? Victor sinks to his knees and embraces his daughter.
Ibrahim opens his arms, Come to me, Aisha. They kiss.
What are we to do? the two men ask. 
Stop war, the girls reply. 
How, we’re only ghosts?
We ghosts can haunt as we choose. Aisha says. 
Ibrahim says, Make peace not war. 
Victor adds. Do no physical harm. 
No need, Aisha says.

Simultaneously, the ruins of Palestine and the wreckage of the towns and cities of Ukraine are overwhelmed by swarm after swarm of the children’s ghosts as dense as a million locusts but totally silent. Soldiers, settlers, collaborators, government apparatchiks, and murderers panic; trapped, struggling for air, defenceless, realising their sudden impotence, and certain their victims, the massacred children, will hold them to account; ‘Just obeying orders’ not being an excuse. 

The Knesset and the Kremlin are totally inundated by ghosts. Netanyahu and Putin, seen as the embodiment of self-serving evil, are escorted by throngs of children to imprisonment and eventual trial for their crimes against humanity.

I hope you enjoyed this story. Please feel free to pass it on to others who may be interested. You can read my previous 500 word stories on my website www.philcoskerwriter.com under ‘Writing’.>>>More
© Phil Cosker 2025
Phil Cosker has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work. All rights reserved; no part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise without the prior permission of the author.

The Dove

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A white dove shakes with fear; in six months the ancient olive grove has changed. No longer a place of tranquillity, providing shade from the burning sun for the flock of sheep and their Palestinian shepherd. Now, there is no shepherd, the sheep lie amidst the gnarled trunks of the cremated trees. The trees are dead. The sheep are dead.

What’s happened? The bird wonders, as it stares at the dense swarms of flies exploring the carcasses. Startled by a sudden noise, the dove flaps its wings to escape the surrounding horror. 
A viper slides across the razed grasses. Don’t go, it hisses. Are you a peace dove?
I am.
What do you want? the snake asks.
An olive branch.
You’ll need more than that with Netanyahu.
Did Netanyahu kill the sheep and burn the trees?
No, settlers did this.
Why?
To steal the land from the Palestinian farmers; Netanyahu likes that.
Surely killing the sheep and destroying the olive grove is stupid?
They are stupid. Sometimes it seems as if it’s more important to own barren land rather than allowing the Palestinians to keep what’s theirs.
How do you know? You’re just a snake, the dove says. 
I’m not just a snake. I’m a Palestinian viper! The Israeli government made me and my kind, the official snake of Israel, naming us the Palestinian viper to show their deep hatred of Palestinians. 
I don’t understand.
The snake hisses. Vipers are deadly poisonous. Palestinians are deadly poisonous. So? 
The dove nods, Palestinians and vipers are both poisonous and would be better dead. 
Got it in one. 
Have you been to the war? the Dove asks.
No. Too far for me. Anyway, I’d get killed and made into shoes.
I must see what’s being done.
Please come back and tell me.

The Dove hides amidst the rubble that was a home in the city of Rafah in Gaza. 

An old woman, entirely dressed in black, nurses a dead child as she sits amidst the domestic detritus created by the bombs. She weeps as she talks to the emaciated corpse in her lap. 

The Dove moves nearer to hear what she’s saying. 
Oh, my daughter’s daughter. Netanyahu and his kind are racists; we’re subhuman, and beneath contempt. At least you’ve escaped their racism. I was a teacher. I taught history. I told my students about Guernica in Spain in 1937 where Franco and his fascists murdered the innocents. I showed them Picasso’s painting. In 2024 Netanyahu and his army have murdered thousands, including using snipers to kill our children; no children means no future. 

The whine of a falling bomb is followed by a vast explosion near where they sit. 

Who will remember Gaza? Who will be our Picasso and paint our Shoah? Who will scream genocide? the woman shouts. 

Another bomb explodes. A blast of concrete shrapnel and glass lacerates the head and shoulders of the woman who falls dead.

The viper waits in vain for the dove to return.

I hope you enjoyed this story. Please feel free to pass it on to others who may be interested. You can read my previous 500 word stories on my website www.philcoskerwriter.com under ‘Writing’.>>>More

© Phil Cosker 2024
Phil Cosker has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work. All rights reserved; no part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted by any mean, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise without the prior permission of the author.