The Dragon That Never Sleeps
Dedication...
This fairy tale is for the children who live where the world is burning.
For those who no longer have a home, nor a school, nor a peaceful sleep.
For those who grow up amidst bombs, the silence of adults, and the sound of fear.
It is for the children of Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, Yemen, Myanmar, Ethiopia—
and every place where childhood is trampled by war.
But it is also for us adults.
Because this fairy tale is not a lullaby. It is an alarm clock.
It helps us look.
To listen.
To never look the other way again.
---
A REAL VOICE
"My name is Mahmoud. I'm nine years old... They will forget her.
But you—you, don't forget her."
Mahmoud, a child survivor in Gaza, speaking of his mother killed before his eyes.
Mahmoud's words are not fantasy.
They are true.
And like him, millions of children carry within them voices that the world cannot hear.
This fairy tale is theirs too...
THE DRAGON THAT DOES NOT SLEEP
There were children who no longer had a bed.
Nor a home. Nor a mother waiting for them.
They had seen the sky turn to fire.
They had learned to recognize the sound of bombs
before they could even read.
They had names.
But no one called them anymore.
One of those children was named Sami.
He was eight years old, with big eyes and grazed knees.
He walked through the rubble with a pebble in his pocket—the only thing he had managed to save.
A small gray stone, but for him it was memory, it was mother, it was home.
He climbed a hill made of iron, broken concrete, and glass.
A hill that hadn't been there before.
It was a hill of war.
At the top, amidst the smoke and dust, something enormous was breathing.
A dragon.
It wasn't a fairytale dragon.
Its wings were broken, its face black with soot, its scales ruined.
But it was alive.
And above all: it wasn't sleeping.
Sami approached slowly.
The dragon looked at him with deep eyes,
full of all the wars in the world.
Then he spoke, in a voice of wind and ash:
"I am the Dragon who never sleeps. If I close my eyes, children like you disappear."
Sami sat down next to him.
He was hungry. Cold. Afraid.
"Why doesn't anyone help us?" he asked.
The dragon lowered his gaze.
"Because they've learned to look without seeing.
To hear without listening.
To live as if you didn't exist."
Sami squeezed the pebble between his fingers.
"I have nothing left."
The dragon shook his head.
"You have your voice.
You have your story.
And as long as you tell it, they can't erase you."
Then Sami stood up.
He looked at a collapsed wall and wrote with a piece of charcoal:
I AM STILL HERE.
Then other children arrived.
One wrote: WE HAVE SEEN.
Another wrote: DON'T FORGET US.
Another: WE ARE ALIVE.
The wall filled with simple, true words, impossible to ignore.
The dragon struggled to rise.
Every broken scale began to glow.
It wasn't magic.
It was memory.
It was truth.
It was resistance.
He spread his wounded wings and flew over the city.
Wherever he passed, the children's words rose to the sky like stars.
Not stars to dream about... Stars to never forget.
AN INVITATION...
If you've read this far, now it's your turn.
You too can write a word, a drawing, a message of peace.
For Mahmoud. For Sami. For every child who resists.
Because every voice, even the smallest,
is a spark in the night.
And together,
we can be the dragon that watches.
