I saw a picture of a Chinese woman - "in anguish". The same features, the same sorrow as the Indian woman from the paper last week. She had the same agony, the same devastation as the other woman in Iraq...
The look is the same, it is! Shoulders pulled by someone holding them back, dry eyes from the pain, a breathlessness and disbelief immeasurable. The scrunched up features of anger, questioning, empty hollowness of grief.
It's all the same, the skin colour doesn't matter, nor race, nor does religion figure in - perhaps after reality sets in, as a comfort & solace - social status is neglected, riches have no importance.
If you concentrate hard enough, you will feel it... you know! The tightness in your chest, the twisting of the intestines, the stomach in knots and you feel out of breath...
The pain is the same, that's all that remains.
And yet, there are still those out there that thrive on providing it, at no cost, absolutely free, free of humanity, free of sentiment, free of feelings... They will provide this for you or anyone just because someone made them believe that because you are different, therefore you have no right to think, to be alive, to breath or even (gasp) to have a good life.
Pain does not know Jew, Christian or Moslem, does not differentiate between Arab, Persian or Black, does not separate between Sunnis, Shiites, Catholic, Protestant, Sephardic, Ashkenazy, and does not know the difference between Hindu & Sikh...
Pain is pain... I feel that perhaps Khalil Gibran would write something like this: Pain is sufficient to be unto its own self as pain. Pain knows no one and embraces all in it's warm dark depth of despair, and lest you forget, it rears its head when you least expect, to stand & humble you to realise that you are not absolved by it until it washes over you and you realise for a moment, that no one has felt this way or ever will. Yet you, like all of blood that is red, since creation, are one and the same of the first whom have felt this pain, from Adam, to Cain & Abel. And what is pain if not ablution from your senses to cleanse your false sense of immortality, is it not with pain that you receive pleasure, the pleasure of birth and growth and life after death, the pleasure of unison between two. So forget not this pain and all others; that is what keeps us human.
very true.. however it's a sad joke.. people who decide on wars are well aware of the consequence.. and as you have seen the all mighty yanks have gone into iraq and still cannot control the situation, even barely.
ReplyDeletepain is blind.
very interesting blog, for more reasons than the obvious ... paths cross and stories are written and re-written, for various reasons at various times ... and it seems our paths have crossed again, in an unlikely virtual world, if only momentarily, recalling a past that seems quite distant ... fascinating find - and an excellent read, as is to be expected .... "Do not go gentle into that good night," my friend ... your stories of Cairo and elsewhere are fascinating ...
ReplyDeleteanon.
ReplyDeleteWhere have these paths crossed?
which virtual place have we met?
virtually, we have met only here. elsewhere, at a given stage, our paths crossed many times - in reality.
ReplyDeleteyou are now straddling both the eastern and western worlds, which for many years you have, across various continents, and I - am firmly planted in the western, as I've always been, nearly 12 hrs behind you.
nevertheless, your mind is just as acute and reflective now as it was then, and perhaps even more so; intriguing to note.
and, we'll leave it at that.
Hello GT I think I finally found you..
DeleteHello GT I think I finally found you..
Delete