Then it was our turn.
A soldier took us.
---
She wasn't shouting.
She wasn't aggressive.
But she was… cold.
Cold in a way that made a child feel unwanted.
---
She spoke Arabic—
but broken, unfamiliar, distant.
Her words felt empty.
Her tone… lifeless.
---
I looked at her,
trying to understand.
But it wasn't just the language.
It was the feeling.
---
There was something in her presence
that made me feel… smaller.
---
The inspection began.
A device passed over our bodies.
Soft mechanical sounds.
Slow movements.
A heavy silence.
---
I stood still.
Not moving.
Not speaking.
I looked at my mother.
At my brothers.
Then at the ground.
---
I didn't understand what was happening.
But I knew…
it wasn't normal.
---
Then they told us to take off our shoes.
---
We did.
Quietly.
Obediently.
---
They placed them aside for inspection.
We waited.
---
Then suddenly…
they threw a pile of shoes in front of us.
---
No names.
No order.
No care.
---
Just one instruction:
Take your shoes.
---
In that moment…
I was no longer just a child who didn't understand.
I was a child who felt.
---
I looked at the pile.
At the people around me.
At my mother.
---
And inside, I asked—silently:
Why?
---
Why are we being treated like this?
Why is there no respect?
Why does it feel like we are not… equal?
---
I had no answers.
But I felt something
I had never felt before.
---
For the first time in my life…
I felt
less than others.
---
No one said it out loud.
But everything about that moment
said it without words.
---
And that feeling…
never left me.
---
That was the first break.
Not in my body—
but inside me.
---
The first time I understood
that the world is not fair.
That some people
are treated differently
for no reason at all.
---
And from that moment…
I learned something simple,
yet painfully real:
Dignity
can be taken away
in an instant.