Earth Water Air are Dead in Gaza but Fire is Alive

It is time to go to Gaza.  Be brave my spirit and travel to the city of the Halfings.  Alas there is no Gandalf the White to send his flight of eagles to lift Frodo and Sam to safety. Mordor has killed the birds of the sky and nothing flies but the machines of death and destruction. Yet Mordor cannot stop the flight of spirits and my spirit is on its way to bear witness. I cannot breathe for the might of Israel has killed the air of Gaza. Go on my spirit. There were two mounds here where the wind played. Where are the trees and groves and the green earth? Where are the olives and the orange trees and the apple trees? Where are the people and their houses. Where are the children and their innocent laughter? They have killed the earth in Gaza.

And there is no water: Dust, endless dust:

 

  What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow

Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,

You cannot say, or guess, for you know only

A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,

And the dead trees give no shelter, the cricket no relief,

And the dry stone no sound of water....

 

  What is that sound in the high air,

Murmur of maternal lamentation

Who are those hooded hordes swarming

Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth

                               (The Waste Land)

 

If there is water, a pool of compassion and the milk of human kindness.  Water is dead in Gaza.

 

But Fire is alive in Gaza, Hail to the day of fire and wanton senseless destruction. Fires rage and blaze devouring, food, sustenance, medicines and the hopes and lives of the dispossessed. Israel will leave but not before ensuring that  the forces and means of life which sustain and nurture are extinguished.

 

Go on my soul. The journey is not ended yet. Look for the children.Those whose parents and siblings met a violent death. They huddle in the corners wailing and wishing for death. They are ridden with guilt because they live. Many of them are running from one place to another in circles, carrying their younger siblings on their backs, dazed, lost, disoriented, without memories, homeless. fatherless and motherless. 

 

Khairat Al-Saleh

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