just keep on praying

Right now I am sitting at Ferogia Bar (my current abode) listening to the crash of the waves and the glee of fish as they go weeeeeeee through the sea.  The bar here closed hours ago so it is very dark and yet even with my limited knowledge of astronomy I would definitely say the stars have won tonight.  It may be dark down here but the sky is positively gleaming. So many stars twinkling overhead it’s like they have gone ‘ Take that night! This sky is ours.'   

And yet in all this light I can still make out the steady flash of planes as they journey overhead. I wonder where they are going? I suppose some are heading for Greece and a lot to Turkey too. I wonder if some are heading for Syria too – it’s not that far from here you know. Not really.

It seems sort of crazy  (almost guilt-laden) that I can be sitting here so peacefully while my beloved country continues to spiral more and more deeply into such a bloody abyss. I joined a Facebook group (Humanity Movement to Protect Syrians) recently to show solidarity . Most days it inundates me with picture of maimed children, weeping mothers, lost brothers, fathers, daughters... even cats with bandages around their stomachs.  Often I want to turn away but I try not to. I try to see each person. I try to respect their life. 

There have been complaints that it is too visceral – too raw by western standards. This is for sure.  We tend to try and be hush hush about death and torture. We don’t want to know about it and we don’t want to to see it. We do it about sex too. We do it about love.

 I remember the night I spent in a Damascene hospital, oozing a delightful yellow substance across my less than pristine white sheets (which the handsome male nurses kindly never drew attention to.)  In the middle of the night there came this harrowing sound -  a haunting chorus of wailing- a guttural outcry of grief which I have never heard before.  No trying to control oneself at that moment, no stiff upper lip.

Yes this site is confronting. They confront death and torture head on. No euphemisms found here. They want us to see see pictures of the maimed and the lost. They want to wail as they bury and many times I do.  It is devastating. It is sickening. It is simply a vile horror.

 But I am not going to turn away. 

I’m just going to pray. I'm just going to keep on praying.

This if for Ayman ( second right) and his family.