Iraq doesn’t make front page news anymore. Kashmir is an old tale. Soon suicide bombings in Pakistan will cease to affect us. What does it matter if in some distant corner of the world our Muslim brothers are dying? Or even that our countrymen are dying, as long as our precious lives are safe? If you decide to ignore the Muslim brotherhood part, isn’t it enough that our fellow human beings are dying? The least relationship we can have amongst us humans is to atleast feel sorrowful when one of us dies.
Fragments of a poem I wrote in 10th grade, when the U.S invaded Afghanistan and the Palestinian Intifada raged on, flash across my memory…
Charred bodies strewn all across us
Little hearts crushed and then thrown away
Little souls flown away prematurely
Other souls imprisioned in cages
Prisons of the mind which are full of hate
Or driven to mad fury by helplessness
Prisons of the mind, enjoying splattered gore
Hearts of lead, seeing nor hearing
Destroying an entire nation for the satisfaction of seeing one man die?
Does it really give you so much pleasure to see innocent lives go to waste?
Seeing others fall makes you rise higher
Climb anothe rung of the worldly ladder
Why don’t you clasp the oppressed’s hand?
And lead him up with you?
It ended on a note of hope. Is it not unsurprising that I cannot remember those lines of hope anymore?
These verses are more relevant now than they were 7 years ago.
The war is at our doorstep.
And our hearts are becoming hardened to human suffering.
“And We have set a barrier before them and a barrier behind them and covered them from above, therefore they see nothing”
– Surah Yasin, Verse # 9
January 14, 2008 at 10:06 pm
We are so selfishly engrossed in our own materialistic lives that we don’t even find time to ‘appreciate’ our apathy towards other humanbeings, of another life less, a broken family, a dying generation, a devastated neighborhood or perhaps, a lost nation?
Can we still be categorized as human beings? Stupid question.
Calling us animals, would perhaps suffice? I just hope I’m not humiliating them by doing that.
January 14, 2008 at 10:22 pm
But, hope remains.
Death of hope is like ruthlessly murdering any chances of survival that we might have had. And yet, hope is not easy to kill. As long as there will be life on earth, hope will exist…(I’m not contradicting its general decadence though, for obvious reasons).
Despairing is easy, trying to be the change is the challenge.
How, then? I wonder…
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta’ala says in the Holy Quran:
“Verily never will Allah change the condition of a people until they change it themselves.” (Ar-Ra’ad 13:11)
And their, my friend lies a clue.
January 14, 2008 at 10:23 pm
It made me cry.
Well written, nessy.
January 15, 2008 at 7:00 am
Less than four hours after this posst, another bomb blast occurred in Landhi…
Peace, anyone?
March 3, 2008 at 8:26 pm
Salaam sister.
I have just discovered your blog. This poem sticks out.
You have captured well the reality of the situation in your poem. It is deeply moving and it is certainly a reminder.
Thank you.
March 4, 2008 at 4:46 am
Wasalam!
I appreciate your kind words
I went through your blog…Beautifully deep!