The grandmother was sitting on the cracked ground. Her tears, now dried, had given way to a silence more expressive than any tear.

She was reminiscing about her grandson, lost during a bombing with his mother. Her granddaughter, the only survivor, approached, holding a broken doll. The grandmother reached out with her wrinkled hands, resembling the branches of her lost olive tree.

Side by side, they exchanged silent glances at the ruins that surrounded them. The old woman may have been thinking about that once-promised better future by Hamas here, in Gaza, while the little girl contemplated that bright future recently promised by Trump, elsewhere.