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


12 comments:

  1. How Lovely DzChick. Happy Eid and World Peace for all.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Aw sorry you had porridge! no Baklawa then DZChik?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Awww Dz Chick bless your sweet sensitive soul. The atrocities happening in the world should make us act and react but by no mean should we suffer vicarious trauma otherwise we can't appreciate our blessings or live a fulfilled life. Le monde a toujours été ainsi fait à grand regret! Saha aidek, go get yourself a beautiful coffee and a hearty breakfast with someone that truly loves you. We can only pray for our brothers and sisters qui souffrent dans les 4 coins du monde. Let's hold on to hope & send positive vibes out there. Peace & love

    ReplyDelete
  4. Chantal Thank you :). World Peace indeed. God Bless Miss Worlds all over the World.

    Anonymous 1 Nope, no baklawa or Makrout, just plain old Porridge oats with a cup of foul-tasting coffee that made me hurl. Lovely! Saha Eidek all the same.

    Thanks Anonymous 2 :) I know we must continue to live and strive to enjoy life as much as humanly possible, Humans think they invented the world, don't they know they're here just like the animals, the dirt and the trees? that their life span is shorter than some of the living beings on this planet? that they vulnerability is more prevalent than they’d like to admit. But I believe this planet has a self defence mechanism and it will soon cleanse this earth of us filthy beings, it’s called the Weather. Remember the last Ice-Age? That’s right you don’t ;)

    Peace & Love

    ReplyDelete
  5. Happiest Eid Dz-Chick. May this day and collective prayer send some comfort to all the people in dire need of help. Hopefully however the Ice Age won't be coming over here too soon.

    ReplyDelete
  6. There is so much suffering in the world hard to enjoy any celebrations while knowing what's happening.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Nice post. Agree, humans have become desensitised to the horror happening around them. We have just turned into consumerists, satisfying the animal urges in us.

    Eid Mubarak. We can enjoy Eid as it is a celebration of something great, the end of obedience to the creator and the disciplining of oneself. Once the two days are over, we have to act to bring about change.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Thank you guys. I'm finding it very difficult to enjoy anything....hmm maybe just choclate!

    ReplyDelete
  9. Happy belated Eid. I can understand why onewe feels this way sometimes but what about when we went through the same hell in the 90's. No country came to our rescue even our brethren Arab neigbours . I think that in the day and age, one have to be selfish and think about problems indoors not outdoors because when the worst comes to the worst, we will be left to our own devices and as for arab unity, it does not exist and we DZs are despised by most of them and I am speaking from experience. Good luck with everything

    ReplyDelete
  10. Thanks, Happy Eid to you to.

    I don't think we should mix issues though, the Algerian civil war or as it's commonly known as the Black decade was an internal affair and it wasn't as mediatised, there was no social media or 3G then and a lot of people simply did not understand what was happening in Algeria with the government and media keeping a close rap on it. Besides that, I think it’s a bit naïve to say “No country came to our rescue”

    “The rise of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) in Algerian politics in the late 1980s was swift and unexpected. By the time France, the United States and Britain realized what was going on, the FIS had already won the local elections by a landslide and was set to win the legislative elections. Before those elections took place, though, the Algerian army took power by force, cancelled the elections, and banned the FIS. French and American reactions were diverse and inconsistent. At first, France could not condone the coup d’état or publicly support it, but it clearly saw it with a willing eye. As President Mitterrand said, “fundamentalism does not appear to be the surest way to reach democracy.”[13] Up until 1993, the French administration was not sure, though, that the generals of Algiers could halt the tide of Islamism sweeping Algeria. While Mitterrand and his foreign affairs minister, Roland Dumas, quietly supported the generals, they were also bracing themselves for the possibility that Islamists might win the civil war. Similarly, when the Clinton administration allowed Anwar Haddam to represent the FIS freely in Washington, it was obvious that the US did not want to be left out in the event of an Islamist victory in Algeria.

    Until 1994, the Algerian junta was still finding it hard to control the Islamist insurgency. The country was paralyzed by its massive foreign debt, and international donors were requesting the introduction of constitutional structures before approving new loans. To get the funds it needed to “eradicate” the Islamists, the junta decided to show that Algerian Islamism was primarily a threat to the West. To that end, the Algerian secret services created their own Islamist groups. Instead of a counterinsurgency campaign, Algerian generals appropriately called it a counter jihad. The fact has been clearly established that some of the notorious Islamic Armed Groups (GIAs) were creations of the Algerian secret services (DRS). On the domestic front, their purpose was to commit atrocities in the name of Islam that would discredit the FIS. On the international front, the aim was to convince the West that Islamism needed to be “eradicated.” These are the groups who came out with a takfiri ideology (excommunication), and declared civilian populations, intellectuals, musicians and artists to be legitimate targets. These are the groups who smashed babies against walls, hacked defenceless civilians, and put toddlers in ovens. These are the groups who raped, pillaged, and massacred entire villages undisturbed, while the screams could be heard from large military barracks nearby. Not once, as is well known, did the army intervene to rescue those people who sometimes were only few hundred feet away. It was not an accident that the terrorized communities always happened to be the ones that massively voted for the FIS in the 1992 elections.” The Algerian Civil War: Washington’s Model for ‘The New Middle-East’ Aug 2007


    The Palestinian affair is an international affair, it is about injustice and colonialism and us as Algerians especially should be supportive because we had our share of occupation and we know what resistance and struggle for freedom are.

    ReplyDelete
  11. What a souleful post! lovely

    ReplyDelete
  12. Hello dzc, lovely post :)

    ReplyDelete

Most popular ramblings!