“It’s okay. The might have guns but we have flowers.”
“But flowers don’t do anything daddy…”
“Of course they do, look, everyone is placing flowers. It’s to fight against the guns”
The child slowly scans the field of strangers, his face slanted in deep contemplation at all times. “It’s to protect?”
“Yes” answers the father smiling at his child’s innocence.
“And the candles too?” questions the child, still unsure.
“It’s to remember the people who are gone yesterday,” reassures the father.
There is a pause. The boy recollects his thoughts. “The flowers and candles are here to protect us” he states.
He now looks directly at his guardian grinning, before returning one last look at the scene around him with renewed faith and hope.
The interviewer steps back in. “Do you feel better now?”
The child replies “Yes, I feel better.”Le Petit Journal
In The Now
Hearing the survivors’ accounts, I recognize a few words from last semester’s French. I struggle to identify most of the sounds, yet the meaning behind them is not lost on me .The language of horror permeates the alien dialect and foreign tones. It speak in magnitudes of the pain that is felt throughout the hearts of millions across the globe. The loss in Paris is certainly not just bound to Paris.
While I surf the net, hoping to find something that might alleviate my distress, I come across articles highlighting the controversy of compassion prioritization towards the West. And it gets me thinking: Is the world really divided in two?
The ‘us’ against ‘them’ categorization localizes all components that make up an individual’s existence. It alienates us from feeling universal emotions of happiness and sadness, hope and despair, security and terror on the same continuum for all of humankind. The capacity to feel for someone is only left constant within certain bounds of physical distances and ethnic distinctions. Civilization is bifurcated into groups that feel the same sentiments but are not allowed to express it in the same way.
But is the loss of blood in Syria not the same as the loss of blood in France? Are the bullets marked differently in Egypt than they are in California? Is death really limited to locales of our state?
Only in the wake of tragedy do we exhibit the most strength. The tragedy need not be defined by geographical locations, by culture or by race. It need not be a tragedy of just a Christian, a Jew, a Muslim or a Hindu. It need only be the tragedy of creation.
There is reason why such instances impact us so deeply. There is a reason why we look for personal accounts in a world filled with news bulletins and repeat telecasts; why we hear the story of a survivor louder than a journalists run at the daily talk show. We seek respite in the words of the affected; the memories of the lost and the songs of the forgotten. The natural human disposition is to place oneself in the circumstances of the victim and the world suddenly presents a much more relatable picture. In addition to completely revolutionizing our outlook on the world itself, it makes us understand ourselves much better. But this is easier said than done. A conscious and continuous effort has to be taken for the revival of true empathy and tolerance. We have to find the human within ourselves.
Terror knows no linguicism and fear has no faith. It is universally and comprehensively felt. Similarly the essence of hope and security is not contingent on the color of our skin or the norms of our ways. It is demanded by the biggest to the smallest of the social creatures alive.
By drawing lines of creed and nationality around ourselves, we not only only serve to breed further devastation but also limit its resolve and solution. A flower can only fight a bullet if it is not restrained by the shackles of our differences. A candle can only stand to protect and counter grenades if it is not stamped by our distinctions.
Paris deserves our sympathies as much as Baghdad deserves our consideration. We can only fight the atrocities of terrorism if we show collective determination in universal numbers; one not marked by our diversities but consolidated by our similarities.
As humans we crave emotion. We crave compassion. We crave humanity. Humanity delivered not through comparisons of the loss in Beirut vs loss in Paris; but humanity delivered by the mere understanding that we are one. One in language, one in tradition and one in religion in the face of fear and terror. Only then will we never be alone.
