The Red Poppy & Green Ribbon

Published in

Journal Kita

2 min readOct 24, 2023

2008, autumn term.

you wore your red poppies made of paper on your shirts like you always did

every Remembrance day, and during the whole school assembly

you gave one minute of silence for the white soldiers who died for

your battles, and everyone had no choice but to participate

even if we did not know what we were doing but

you knew exactly what you were doing

I was eleven years old,

I sat in silence, and

I could not think to feel sorry

for those who died trying to colonise the world including my own country, exploiting

my people and our lands

you either couldn’t or refused to see our pain, and yet

we were made to sympathise with yours

2009, the following spring term.

we decided to wear green ribbons pinned to our shirts and signed petitions

in support of our brothers and sisters in Gaza who were martyred

you saw our green ribbons, and told us that perhaps we shouldn’t wear them to school

because it was too controversial but

I didn’t listen, and kept mine on me close to my beating heart

you called it a war, but what we saw was a massacre

which are two different things

why was it acceptable to grieve for the red poppy lives

and not for the green ribbon lives?

to me, the red poppies were not innocent victims, they could never be

and the green ribbons matter and will never be forgotten, at least not by

if I could go back in time

to that one minute of silence

I would stand up and scream

“NO!”

I would call you all out for all your white tears

which have drowned our cries for you to do better, but of course

I couldn’t have known then

I was just a child

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Written by Ghina A. Furqan