Voiceless: Mais, the Little Girl Silenced by War

She was seven years old when she saw him fall. She didn’t know what “airstrike” or “martyr” meant, but in one moment, she understood that something had shattered forever. Her name is Mais, and she used to fill the house with laughter—before her words choked in silence.

Since that day, she hasn’t spoken a word, says her mother in a hoarse voice. She doesn’t laugh, doesn’t cry out loud. But her eyes say everything.

At the beginning of the bombing in Gaza, the family took shelter in a single room. When the missile struck, Mais’s father was killed instantly, his blood staining the wall. Mais was right beside him. She didn’t scream. She just held his hand and stared at him like she couldn’t believe it, her mother adds.

From that moment on, Mais entered total silence. No one has heard her voice since—not even during play. Sometimes she hums to herself… but she doesn’t talk to us, says her older sister.

Psychologists visited her. One of them said: Mais is suffering from post-traumatic stress. Silence is her way of protecting herself.

Among the notes in the doctor’s report was this line: “Mais doesn’t just need medicine—she needs a lost sense of safety that no pill can provide.”

I remembered Mahmoud Darwish’s words:

Silence in the presence of a wound… is another crime.

Mais is now ten. She sits for hours, staring into space, or drawing faces with no mouths. All her drawings show people who don’t speak, her mother says.

In Gaza, there are thousands of children like Mais. Wounds that don’t bleed. Injuries that don’t show up in reports. Pains that don’t cry out—but endure.

I once asked her with gestures, Do you want to tell me something? She nodded and then wrote in her notebook: Daddy is gone… and my voice left with him.

This isn’t just the story of a silent girl—it’s the story of an entire generation whose voices were suffocated… still waiting for someone to hear them.