Chana Joffe-Walt

Hi, Banyas. Yeah. Do you want to talk?

yeah let's get to it okay oh what my friends were with me to drawing and one of my friends have have have drawn a plane like a war plane or a plane you travel in uh traveling okay do you ever draw anything about the war No, nothing at all. Why not?

Your friends?

I was eager to ask Banias about the news, the evacuation. But what she wanted to talk about was a fight she had that day with another kid in the building. A girl. Banias calls her the girl with the bad personality. That girl told Banias today that one of her pictures was no good.

And what did she say?

She's the most bad friend. Did she not know about the evacuation order? She must, right? I didn't want to scare her. Banias, I saw your mom wrote about people leaving Derbala. Yes, but we will go to Azawaida, to our relatives. What do you think about that?

Where will you sleep if you pack your mattress?

Okay. Have you ever lived in a tent? No.

Are you scared to move, to leave your friends, or to leave your house?

You are?

Banias was ready to leave because it meant she could get away from the girl with the bad personality. Almost a million kids in Gaza have made a move like this since Israel invaded, many of them multiple times. So it was interesting to hear how a child was thinking about it. Banias was ready to flee the home she'd lived in for 10 months at that point. To move into a tent.

Because she got into a fight with an annoying girl that day. Because that is what just happened. And because Banias is eight. She told me her friend Donna's leaving, too.

You're not scared? No. Okay.

What does your mom think is a secret?

I almost couldn't bear hearing this. Banias' visceral, immediate panic was so uncomfortable, hearing her mother pierce the carefully constructed artifice she'd presented to me. And it was disorienting. It made me think of all the things I didn't know. Does she want to talk again? Yeah, she's here. Okay. Hello. Hi, Banias. Hi. Hi. How come you didn't want me to know that you were upset?

I'm not upset. You're not upset. Do you want to talk about that or no?

What? Not yet. Is there anything else you want to tell me about how you're doing?

Yeah, it's late. So I hope you have an easy night, Benyus.

An incomplete list of things Benyus does not have control over. Can she go home? No. Is there food? Not enough. Is there school? No. Is there safety here? No. Banias lives in what has become the most dangerous place in the world to be a child. Disease in Gaza is widespread. Children face acute malnutrition. Kids are getting horrible skin infections. Polio has reappeared in a 10-month-old baby.

Children are losing their limbs, their parents, and they are being killed constantly. More than 13,000 children have been killed so far. including at least 710 babies, some of them born and then killed since the war began. Maram told me Banias has seen dead children. She's seen their small bodies wrapped in white cloth by the hospital.