january 2005

To the children of the World on Christmas day
by Tamer

I wept alone when I first wept… I almost couldn’t laugh unless I had wept. I lived the occupation, and the nativity in a land robbed of Christmas, where no celebration was shielded from harm… This is the norm in the shadow of carnage and occupation…The disregard of all that is holy, of the nativity… of Christmas.

This story, from a child in the heart of Palestine, is to invite Mercy and peace and refuse occupation and tyranny.

Christmas bells tolled in the land of peace, and the children sang their hymns, and chatted all night.

Shurouq said: “Its time to play in peace and love. Hostilities are distant even though they repeatedly pop up in conversations.”

Yahya: “How wonderful to live as flowers in a dream, far away from sadness and pain, in a world full of justice and order. Let’s play and be joyful like every other child.”

Filisteen: “What order and what dreams do you speak of? The world ignores Christmas, and permits, oppression, violence and the taking of life.”

Shurouq: “Embrace peace… The best among us are those who can smile and hope through pain and anguish.”

Filisteen: “I felt the world full of despair when I lost my childhood under the rubble… oh I looked for it… But it was nowhere to be found.”

Yahya: “The world has made of love an enemy… Perhaps the world might awaken from its apathy… Let us sing to our land and to Christmas:

When the sky weeps

We are a silent for a while, and then we join and weep along.

In silence, we say NO to killing and to aggression.

When we see birds in the sky

We remember our villages and our abandoned homes

We cry a while and then we sing like birds in a cage.

When we paint

We color Christmas and joy everywhere.

We paint the freedom that we have yet to see,

in the world of justice and humanity.

Filisteen, interrupting: “I don’t see why life has awoken us in a world whose conscience has been destroyed and murdered. Was it for the purpose of giving us a taste of humiliation and suffering? Are we supposed to find that lost conscience among the graves and the dead, in order to regain a smile that was lost because of occupation and from the very first incursion?

Yahya: “Are the prospects of such a discussion still open, or has the orphaned child pronounced the opportunity dead?”

Black Pen Friend/Tamer © we are all human beings.. .. .Palestine   phone NO. +00972-2777108  

__________________________________________________