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Truth and Freedom - Moments on a Crowded Planet |
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Thoughts
Without Boundaries Thoughts
of love & longing |
There
is no security greater than life In the deafening silence of the dusk, in the seconds after a explosion ripped the dreams out of 27 young lives in the café in Tel Aviv, Israel, Barak, a slight boy of 17, thrown against the wall and with his left knee shattered, put his arms around the girl sobbing next to him and whispered "don't worry! You're safe now". Fifty miles to the North, outside Haifa, Muhafiz, a Lebanese boy, also 17, knelt in prayer behind a rock. Tears flowed from his eyes as he looked at the bloodshot sky… He thought of his parents' fight to keep their children alive, he thought of his little brother, buried in the Gaza rubble, but most of all, he thought of the girl he loved with ever exploding passion, Nadia, who spoke so often about freedom and who, seconds ago would have triggered the cyclonite wrapped around her waist. He packed the strips of RDX around his chest and body and headed for the Haifa marketplace. A thousand kilometres southwards, as the first stars came out to mingle in the night, like little fires in the sky, a small family huddled around a little fire on the ground in a refugee camp outside Somalia. Mkunte, once leader and warrior, now reduced to expressing gratitude for his first meal in 2 days, tried to console is little daughter. "Have courage, my princess, there is nothing to be scared of anymore". "When can we go home?" she asked plaintively. "We cannot go home my princess, but we will be safe here" In distant Afghanistan, as the plough in the sky disappeared beyond the snow caps, three-year-old year old Ashka turned towards her mother "Will Papa come back today?" "Go to sleep," said her mother, "Papa has gone to Allah to make sure you are safe." "But is Papa safe?" "Yes, he is safe where he is, he has gone there so that we can walk freely across this world. Some day you will understand that." The little girl nodded and stared at the moon through the hole in the wall. The same moon shone through the window in Godhra, Gujarat, on seven-year-old Shamim's face. He had been crying since that morning, although now his whimpers had become a part of the haunting silence of the house. Sabeena, his aging grandmother, tried only to hold him close enough to stop him from shaking. She had given up trying to answer his questions. "Why did those Hindu men run into the house and attack us?" "Because they are scared of us" "Why did they take Amma's clothes off?" "Because they are bad men and they wanted to be cruel to us" "Why did they kill Appa?" "Because they don't want us to live here anymore" "Are they Pakistanis? Babbu says Pakistani's are bad people?" "No beta, these are Indian people" "But in school they told us that India is a free country and we can live anywhere" "Yes beta, but that's not always true - we will not be safe here anymore" "What will happen to those people?" "They will live here in safety when we are gone". "But where will we go?" "I don't know beta" "Will those men come after us?" "I don't know…" Even as Shamim tried to make sense of a painful new world, across the earth, little Joey sat in his mother's lap wearing a serious expression. "Mommy, did Daddy die before or after the plane hit the building?" "After, dear, he was trying to help other people get through first". "Mummy, why did they attack the building?" "Because they're evil, Joey". "Oh," "… do they work for Darth Vader mommy?" No Joey, they belong to earth. "Oh" "… Mommy, why did daddy let the others go through?" "So that… so that others could be safe" "Didn't he want to be safe too?" "No Joey, more than that, he wanted you to grow up being free and fearless" "…like the lions in Africa, Mommy?" "I don't know baby, are the lions in Africa fearless?" The lions were only six hundred yards away from Kalili, though none of them knew it. On the outskirts of a Kinshasha suburb, in West-Central Africa, Kalili was engaged in his usual habit of gazing at the road. Kalili was turning fourteen but he may have been six. The long, long walk lasting over two months, usually without food and occasionally without water was now a distant memory. But the malnutrition that had indefinitely sabotaged his six-year-old brain's chances of further development had left a legacy of a failed revolution on his life. Most Hutu boys of his age were either dead or grown men. They ran and hunted and earned and killed. But Kalili stared into the distance as though he expected his mother and father to come walking up the same way that he had come. His lips moved slowly… forming the only real sentence he knew. "Free to be safe" - his mother had kept whispering to him as she carried him as far as she could. And then somewhere in the running and the hiding and the walking without end and without food, he had found himself alone, being herded along by strangers. Since then, time had stood still for Kalili. He was safe but he didn't know it. He was free, but it made no difference to him. He was oblivious to the referendum being proposed for Congolese Hutus to try and coexist with the Tutsis - an event that could change the lives of all his compatriots. Ananta
Mayamanta also knew nothing about the referendum that many of his
countrymen had signed. He had no thoughts of independence or sovereignty.
He was terrified of the rising moon. He was petrified of the light
and what it would bring. Huddled close to a fence somewhere in Timor,
he knew he could not hide. Sooner or later, the soldiers would come
looking for him. He had become special to their cruel tastes. For
a week now, the Indonesian soldiers had played with both his mind
and body, laughing at his fear, his embarrassment, his pain and
finally his submission. He was going to provide them with lots of
fun for the next few days. Not even a hundred Rupiahs could buy
them the kind of entertainment they could get at the expense of
the fifteen-year-old. At some point of time they would report his
presence to the authorities. Then Ananta, or what was left of him
would be allowed to return to his village in somewhere in a corner
of independent East Timor. Prisons, was a favourite game of Jose Grajales, Miguel Herera and their friends. Miguel - at twelve, the eldest - always provided the worldly advice, though the adventurous eleven-year-old Jose was the recognized leader of this band of kids on the south side of Bogota. "Oye, what did they capture those men for?" asked Ramon - the youngest, referring to a television bulletin. "Ha! Those were the Irishmen they caught and punished," responded Miguel. "Where's Ireland?" "Fool! Don't you even read your geography? Ireland is in Britain, where the Anglesi live". "Who's punishing them? "The British Government - they don't want any of the IRA caballeros walking around free". "Why?" "Because, Ramon, every free IRA bandito means less safety for the Anglesi". "Ok! You are the Anglesi today. We're going to be the IRA" - butted in Jose - "you hide there… we'll start from here. You're going to have to stop us getting coca to the other side of the street…" "kapow"… "ayaaaaghhh!…" and soon the street was a swirl of dust and kids scrapping and screaming. Screaming disease. That's what they called it in the town of Srebrenica, in Serbia. So many children had it. The mothers cursed it, the fathers forbade it; but the wizened old men kept the stories alive. Bundled in their bitter blankets and wearing wind-worn faces, even now, they told stories of the massacre. Each trying to out-do the other in the delivery and the grisly detailing. It kept them popular among the children. From dawn till dusk the children gathered around them for stories, until parents preparing for dinner forced them back indoors. Whereupon they would try to recount, with shining eyes their latest stories. The parents would listen tight-lipped and try to prevent the children from going back to the old men. Sometimes the parents couldn't go to sleep. Often the mothers just cried till midnight. And often, the children woke up screaming at midnight - reliving the stories that their parents were struggling to forget. At Midnight in Sri Lanka - Samaraveera tried to forget the cold as he started his walk on the road from Vavniya to Killinochi. His chest was puffed with pride, but also with seven hundred grams of explosives. Earlier in the evening he had dined with the chief Senanayake who had told him "One day Samara, you and I will be remembered as the people who brought freedom to this land". Samara had listened intently, his eyes glistening in the half-light. He didn't understand all that the chief had said that evening. He couldn't follow the complex political and social arguments put forward by most people who discussed such things. But he did remember his brother Ranashekhara talking to him the night he put on his jacket. "Samara…" he had said, "… I don't know if what I am going to do is right or wrong. I have no choice anymore. I just hope that you are well treated because of what I've done". That was three years ago and Rana had gone in a blaze of pain and glory. He would have liked to know that Samara had basked in the glory of being his brother ever since. "He was one of the best, ever" … the men used to say. "He walked right up to the heart of the administrative center before he triggered… he took more than 30…" For 3 years, Samara had looked forward to the moment when he could emulate Rana. And tonight, he was wearing the jacket. He could feel the battery nestled under his arm. Today, at 12 years and 3 days, Samara was making his final choice between freedom and security. In his hand he carried a little inscription that the chief had given to him on a scrap of paper. Two simple lines were scribbled in red on the paper. "There
is no greater security than life. August 2002
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