When the President Saw Photos of Terrorists Beheading Children
Just don't burn more others - out of too much empathy
Palestinian children gather to fill bottles with water from public taps amid the conflict with Israel in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip [Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters]
When the President Saw Photos of Terrorists Beheading Children
In other words, we sit far away - enough - to observe whatever does not rain on us sizzling as fireworks we admire a mundane morning counting loss or gain and sprinkling a pinch of dramatic speech on the fate of others' children - they never see the world behind the fence or lies - where we have coffee and trace a strategic map no blood drips down from the speech we argue about beheading [who? and who not?] a little girl holds an empty bottle in her hands - water is weaponized food tastes like dead bodies like her - a hostage of conscience - bargaining object a counted body even she is still waiting for water is contagious like hate it spreads so fast she gets a sip it smells like concrete powdered under siege it tastes like her grandma's broken olive jar, once was the gift of love spreading but not as fast as hatred raining on her skin Now, this, she - the symbol of our gain loss of others, instrument of [in]-justice claimed as casualties and war crimes big words yet I concern if anyone asks the girl if she is a number - an estimation or one among us? if she needs to be mentioned beheaded?
Empathy under Siege
If we have a home to argue about war or not war we have this luxury of being outsiders, please be careful arguing over others' fates, breathe, death and tears their hunger, sleep deprivation, their bleeding ankles, their exploded eyes, their children's cold bodies, their relatives lying inside white and blue bedsheets, blood-splattered blankets covering their mothers's spilling legs, their quiet gaze into the complete evaporation this quiet time we have, please be very careful look at a mother crying, a father screaming a kid standing by a rifle in the midtown - Wait, which midtown? - We do not know - this midtown is gratified thousands of times on air there is a reason why we call it "on air" because hatred spreads through the air we sniff the air and go to war because we have free time to wonder, mingle, argue, and [finally] be persuaded war is needed to save humanity, except maybe humanity means please do not move bombs overseas, drones over air, missiles over sky At home we look away from the miseries of others it is OK to ignore and get on with our way of lives it is OK to be cold and indifferent Just don't burn more others - out of too much empathy.
A very old war story
told by a taxi man leisurely by the border I walked into the curtain of the blown-out soil my tongue tasted dust my armpits bled nonstop may my blood turned rain there was no rain just a summer in Cambodia the land of cursing heat a young woman ran to us, I mean my squad, a little girl followed her her eyes were shallowed a drained river inside no water - or tears the woman begged don't go that way help us help my daughter take my daughter we moved like a punch of dust through her you know, our command graze the enemy toward the blinded horizon bullets whistled into my friend's thighs his blood the cascade [or the river?] we backed up we ran for our lives I ran until I saw that river eyes split in half one blown one stared she rolled into the womb her mother - indiscernible 40 years then, now That river drained my own eyes, dried unclosed - a question pierces me like right now, when I am driving that day if we talked I would've got to know her home in flood season the ripening palm sugar juice in war we don't talk children no place for them so she drained the river and left me no hope