I cry for Sabra, Shatila and Lebanon Places I have never been. People I have never known.
I cry for heinous human stupidity and the audacity of evil edged on nonsensical justification. Shabra, Shatila and Lebanon…far away places that settled in my heart long ago when clarity came in the form of a young fiery Palestinian journalists called Samaa who made me understand the reality of what the other side of the power-world would rather we do not see. Samaa said to me; “ they come with their tankers and machine guns, our brave boys fight with stones and sticks yet they call us terrorists!
Just who is your god who declares your supremacy over the other? Who is your god who summons you to flatten thousands of innocent souls in the name of whatever rubbish you want to call it? Just who is your god? That child who died under your hail of bombs would be 30 today. That child would have been great; that child would today be teaching you how to love, you who is a malnourished of what makes one human! That child never died; that child will continue to slash the thorny fields of your conscious even when you think you are safe.
That child will re-humanize you one day. I swear by these tears that I shed! Thousands of kilometers far away from Sabra, Shatila & Lebanon, our minds were trained to believe the lies of the aggressor – where hate & violation came camouflaged in fake boardroom jargons. Still, we know, I know, that once upon a time, on the map of the world, there was a country called Palestine.
Today the map has changed. Where did Palestine go? I have just read about Sabra, Shatila and Lebanon and that time back in 1982 when the cowards marched into the refugee camps and exposed their rotten, twisted, darkened souls. And now it is so clear to me, just who the real terrorists are. Now I know that a terrorist is one who fears the sting of TRUTH because truth can never be silenced by a gun-shot. Truth is like a growing pregnancy, you cannot hide it with a damn bandage!! Sabra, Shatila and Lebanon, I cry for you. M.N.
Monday, December 10, 2012
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Men do love
In the cold streets of Addis Ababa, I watched the rain play ping-pong with our sanity. The cold was stinging, the wind was biting, but the rain was determined to unsettle our comfort.
It is the cold season but life never stops because the weather is hot or cold, life goes on regardless. And so i peer outside the window of the van and bump into expressionless faces of hard-working Ethiopians, rushing to outsmart the rain.
At a bus-stop corner where commuters stood impatiently for the next bus, I caught the trembling look of a man who had just bid his girlfriend goodbye. She moved a little closer to his cheek - he planted a quick shy kiss, took a step back and looked at her with a look that apologized for letting his weaknesses show. We zoomed past.
At the parking bay of the hotel, the gate-man in a dark green uniform is momentarily swayed by the beauty of a woman who suddenly appears in front of the bus to ask him for directions. We are forgotten in the bay as he stares perplexed at the magnificent shock of creation that had just stolen his attention. I sense his longing in the steps he attempts, torn between duty and human need.
There's a guy in the lobby with his family; a wife and two little girls.The revolving door swings and he quickly grabs his little one to his arm while his other arm reaches our to gently push his wife out of harm's way as she carries her other daughter to her bosom. The guy has two suitcases by his feet and a traveling back-pack still on his back. He is talking to the receptionist, filling some forms but all the while his attention goes back to his wife and his kids - he has living in his mind and love in his heart - the love that watches his wife and kids.
It is cold in my room and the potato chips and chicken sandwich now taste like a really bad idea. Sleep has vanished and so I log in and stumble into a YouTube clip; "the reluctant outlaw" and I mellow at the protagonist who talks his way into my heart. He is a young matatu driver, a father of two, hardened in the streets of Nairobi,held hostage by the corruption, violence, and dangers of navigating through the city in the face of so much adversity.
I am stunned by his sincerity and his dream to become a great writer one day. I dream along with him as I enter his world of early mornings, noisy, sweaty days of bribing the police and breaking traffic rules as well as the lurking dangers of car-jacking and accidents. He goes home in the cover of darkness seeking his wife's embrace, wakes his sleepy kids for a cuddle and a kiss and closes his eyes to try and forget his crazy job - all he wants is to buy his three year old son a pair of shoe tomorrow which he really cannot afford!
And so in this chilly Addis Ababa night, i think of my love who rolls up his sleeves every morning and works through unspeakable circumstances and comes back home to open his arms for his family to snuggle in. I think of him and suddenly it dawns on me that he does that so passionately regardless of the ugliness of the challenges to his manliness - he does it because in his heart, we, his family have something he desperately needs, something that he gives us with selfless abandon - something called love.
It is the cold season but life never stops because the weather is hot or cold, life goes on regardless. And so i peer outside the window of the van and bump into expressionless faces of hard-working Ethiopians, rushing to outsmart the rain.
At a bus-stop corner where commuters stood impatiently for the next bus, I caught the trembling look of a man who had just bid his girlfriend goodbye. She moved a little closer to his cheek - he planted a quick shy kiss, took a step back and looked at her with a look that apologized for letting his weaknesses show. We zoomed past.
At the parking bay of the hotel, the gate-man in a dark green uniform is momentarily swayed by the beauty of a woman who suddenly appears in front of the bus to ask him for directions. We are forgotten in the bay as he stares perplexed at the magnificent shock of creation that had just stolen his attention. I sense his longing in the steps he attempts, torn between duty and human need.
There's a guy in the lobby with his family; a wife and two little girls.The revolving door swings and he quickly grabs his little one to his arm while his other arm reaches our to gently push his wife out of harm's way as she carries her other daughter to her bosom. The guy has two suitcases by his feet and a traveling back-pack still on his back. He is talking to the receptionist, filling some forms but all the while his attention goes back to his wife and his kids - he has living in his mind and love in his heart - the love that watches his wife and kids.
It is cold in my room and the potato chips and chicken sandwich now taste like a really bad idea. Sleep has vanished and so I log in and stumble into a YouTube clip; "the reluctant outlaw" and I mellow at the protagonist who talks his way into my heart. He is a young matatu driver, a father of two, hardened in the streets of Nairobi,held hostage by the corruption, violence, and dangers of navigating through the city in the face of so much adversity.
I am stunned by his sincerity and his dream to become a great writer one day. I dream along with him as I enter his world of early mornings, noisy, sweaty days of bribing the police and breaking traffic rules as well as the lurking dangers of car-jacking and accidents. He goes home in the cover of darkness seeking his wife's embrace, wakes his sleepy kids for a cuddle and a kiss and closes his eyes to try and forget his crazy job - all he wants is to buy his three year old son a pair of shoe tomorrow which he really cannot afford!
And so in this chilly Addis Ababa night, i think of my love who rolls up his sleeves every morning and works through unspeakable circumstances and comes back home to open his arms for his family to snuggle in. I think of him and suddenly it dawns on me that he does that so passionately regardless of the ugliness of the challenges to his manliness - he does it because in his heart, we, his family have something he desperately needs, something that he gives us with selfless abandon - something called love.
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