Tuesday 29 July 2014

Silence of the World


 



Every year, on every day of Eid el Fitr (le ptit Eid), feelings of joy, of achievement and happiness fill the air and the souls, as you walk around London, the sight of colourful dresses and happy faces bring a smile to your face (well mine anyway), so many faithful of so many colours, cultures and countries fill the streets of London, visit relatives, mosques and generally just seem to float about parading their joy and enjoying this big reward that is Eid, the day you get to finally eat in daylight! Oh you black elixir, come hither…

Spending Eid at work isn’t the best way I could think of enjoying this special day, but one has not much choice sometimes and one has to do with what one is given. After so many years away from home, you learn to build yourself a second family with whom you can share special moments and feel the love (special thought for a couple of friends who have become our foster parents) with people who understand how important this day is. After a month of hard core Ramadan observance, Eid is supposed to be your reward, a day that always fills you with joy and a high sense of achievement and you wish people understood that, when I say people I mean people who don’t know much about Ramadan, your non-Muslim friends or maybe it’s more a case of your non-cultured friends.

A simple “Happy Eid” will make me feel special, I always explain to my friends that it’s as close to Xmas for us as it gets yet it remain alien to them. Bah! Who needs your “Happy Eid” anyway!

But this year, it’s a different story all together; I am not delving into the joy or Eid, not because of the measly bowl of porridge I had for breakfast or the poor quality coffee brewed by the office vending machine, for this big breakfast day, but it’s more to do with the deterioration of humanity, the suffering and the plight of the Palestinian and Syrian people at this very moment, killings of innocent all over Africa, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, who are certainly not enjoying it for different reasons. Not because they had a bad quality coffee (it was truly shit) from a vending machine which I suspect to be from the first world war, but because some of them don’t have anything to eat, nowhere to live, children are laying down in a hospital bed being treated for war wounds and limb severance instead of scratches and booboos from the swings and slides, others are mourning their amounting numbers of dead whilst most of them are dispossessed, starving, homeless and fighting a powerful occupation backed by: The silence of the world.
 
So with the foul tasting coffee, the heavy heart and few and far in between “Happy Eid” Wishes, one must learn to be grateful and practice empathy albeit with an after taste of badly ground beans.

Dz-chick…in mourning for humanity


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