It’s been more than a week of me trying to shield you from the news and protect you from my anxiety, but I am failing. You keep asking me what is wrong. I wish I could tell you. The nights are long and sleepless, the days are heavy and slow. Here in Paris, the world is moving on but mine has stalled.

I walk on the streets and look at people going on with their lives, and I can’t help but wonder how it must feel to live a normal life, not to worry about those you love, or watch your country burn from afar.

Israel has been heavily shelling our country for many days now. It claims it’s waging a war against Hezbollah, but in reality, it’s waging yet another war against Lebanon. The airstrikes have killed at least 2,000 people, many are children your age. Hundreds of thousands of Lebanese are living on the streets, and little girls that look just like you, have turned pavements into their beds and classrooms into their homes.

Instead of worrying about homework, they worry about staying alive. They can’t buy a ticket to the cinema or play in a park like we do, theirs is a life of survival. They won’t read a bedtime story like we do every night, safe and warm in our bed, because most of the time they can’t sleep, the explosions are frightening and too loud.

I came to Paris seeking a sense of normalcy, wanting to protect you and save you but I feel like I never managed to save myself. I came here to build a new life, thinking it would be simple to pull the plug on these endless cycles of violence and cut the cord with Lebanon after that devastating explosion in 2020 that wrecked our lives and traumatized us. But Lebanon always manages to pull me back. It never leaves me.

I came here thinking this is where you will not have to fight for your rights, where you will be accepted for who you are, but the apathy around me is breaking me.

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Don’t get me wrong, I am so grateful for the opportunity I was given to bring you here, for the normal life you have, the friendships you have built, the culture and the peace. Seeing you thrive is my greatest reward, but there is no peace inside of me. Today, I am hoping to find some outrage for my pain, and all I hear is a deafening silence. I am hoping for actions that would save what is left of our homeland, but all I hear is an empty rhetoric. I thought the impunity we fled from had no place in Europe, I thought everyone here believes in upholding international law, no matter what or where. Instead, it feels more and more like justice is the exclusive right of certain people and certain places.

I feel so helpless today. As a mother, I can’t leave you alone and go back home where your father is and where I can report on the war, although there is nothing else I would rather do. I spend my days speaking on TV channels around the world and writing on social media platforms raising awareness. I talk and I talk, thinking I would feel better but I don’t. This is my first time out of Lebanon when tragedy strikes and I am grappling with being away so much.

You know there is a war in Gaza, partly despite my wishes. I wanted to protect you but I also did not want you to live in a bubble. Lebanon is looking more and more like Gaza every day. You kept asking me all year long if the war had stopped, and if the big court that I visited, referring to the International Court of Justice which I covered earlier this year, had taken Israel to prison. I never know what to say. But it’s simple, it has not because Israel has been allowed to go on with its war crimes, and its illegal occupation of Palestinian land for too long.

You will not read this today, not even in a few years but I am hoping that one day, when I feel like you are ready, I will give you this letter and with it, my book about Lebanon’s collapse, so that you know, understand and remember. Maybe then, you will be in Beirut where I fell in love with your father, where I raised you for the first four years, and where I have my most beautiful memories. Maybe then, you will look at me in disbelief, the past would feel so distant and so surreal, you would look at me and say "I am glad it’s over and we are in a much better place."

Dalal Mawad is an award-winning independent journalist based in Paris and the author of "All She Lost, the explosion in Lebanon, the collapse of a nation and the women who survive."