There has never been a time, in my life, where I have seen and felt such large-scale depression in the nation (Nation translates to Ummah, run – paranoid- run!).
People seem to be walking about aimlessly with no purpose you can feel that guides them. They are awake, but not awake – it’s almost like being sedated and having your body occupied by someone other than yourself. You seem alive when you are, in reality, not.
The sadness that I feel in my heart and in my family’s hearts is engulfing us all in utter darkness. I cannot seem to be able to smile and mean it, I cannot seem to be able to savour what little food I eat these days (no appetite), and I cannot dismiss the picture of the dead bodies of the Lebanese girls pulled out from under the rubble of the building that Israel shelled in Qana. I try to imagine how it must feel like to carry my own child in my arms when her little chest does not heave anymore, when her bloody mouth is open, when I cannot push her stretched stiff arm to the sides of her body – and I am on the verge of losing my sanity.
Qana is a reminder that Israel is capable of cold blooded murder beyond human imagination, beyond international laws, and beyond us all. The “It was an error” and the “Terrorists were hiding in that place” and the “We are deeply saddened by the loss of innocent lives” clichés are old, they’re so old, Israel. You cannot sell us that any longer. The world and history will tell of the numerous daily murders in Palestine and Lebanon.
Now Israel says that it is not in a hurry to stop this war (Fools you are if you expected anything else from an apartheid state), and now is the time where the emotional build-up on both sides of the conflict will dominate the scene. It’s prelude to greater crises, it is prelude to the tipping point – when the people behind their TV sets cannot take it a second more, where chaos will have the upper hand. You only reap what you sow.
My own life has changed dramatically since the start of this war. Other than my appetite loss and being haunted by pictures of dead Lebanese civilians slaughtered by terror, I am unable to sleep at night properly. I wake up in the morning with a headache, a terrible mood, and I occasionally cry during the day. I may be losing my focus, too. I have noticed that I cannot function as I used to before the Israeli aggression war and often times I have to ask people to repeat what they said because I was not paying attention to what they were saying.
Do you understand what it means to see suffering and killing daily and block your feelings? As I said to a very good friend of mine some days ago, I cannot afford to feel the pain every time I watch people die next door. It would cost me my mind – I am the type of person that identifies with others’ pain physically. This means my imagination relates to what injury I see and I feel it as if I was hurt in the same fashion. That, my friends, – that sort of feeling could have robbed me of my sanity a long time ago had I not blocked it.
But to block it is another problem. I cannot block it totally because I am not made of stone, I feel what my people in Lebanon are feeling and I see what my people in Palestine are going through every day of their lives since the arrival of the early Israeli immigrants to Palestine. I grew up with this – war has always been a theme in my life and in my family’s life. Not feeling anything about it would render me inhuman.
To block your feelings partially creates the conflict between sympathy and self-preservation. You start asking yourself such questions as ” My people are being killed, and I don’t feel their pain. What am I made of?”. You live in torment knowing that, so close to home – way too close to home, people just like you ( a girl just like me) is living in complete injustice while the world watches and gives killers more time to complete their crime.
My family has been showered by blessings lately on so many different levels, but we are numb to all pleasure it seems. The continuous killing of Lebanese civilians has robbed us of any joy we are entitled to taste. I have mixed feelings about this, am I being ungrateful to what I am being blessed with? Then again, how can I enjoy holding a newborn baby in my arms when just the day before I saw the corpse of a Lebanese newborn held up high in a man’s arm announcing that this perfect innocence has lost a father, a mother, then himself?
When has this happened, where has it happened, and gone unpublicized but in Lebanon? Has human life turned so cheap?
There is no justice in this world – I’ll give you that. What is going on alone should make us all consider if we are any different from monsters and if, indeed, we need a sequel for this life. I believe we do, those criminals cannot go unpunished. The day will come when justice shall be established – in this life or the next. Chew on that.
