A young man turned war reporter asks; why should he continue to bare witness to the atrocities around him when half the world refuses to listen and the other half cannot make it stop.
Image: Motaz Azaiza via Instagram
A young man turned war reporter asks; why should he continue to bare witness to the atrocities around him when half the world refuses to listen and the other half cannot make it stop. In the dead of the night he mourns the blackness of his hair as he sees even his beard begin to show signs of the trauma that is his fate. He wants to the see the world, he wonders if he ever will, as the world sees him at his most vulnerable.
His questions are understandable, expected even, and yet reading through his post one question
halted my thinking. The young man turned war reporter asks the whole world and no one at once:
“If I made it and stayed alive, will I be mentally able to enjoy a moment in my whole life?”
Here lies the truth of this grave injustice. Those who survive are far more gone that those who perished.
Motaz and the brave reporters on the ground, of whom many have sacrificed their lives, have shown us. They have reported the devastation, the carnage and the agony. We bore witness yet the genocide continues and so, now he asks us not to talk about strength because we haven't been through it and he is right. How reckless the audacity of the world must seem to him, how ridiculous.
After a brief pause I pictured young Motaz getting out, seeing the world and hoped, that when he does, his smile would not be burdened. That the screams can be quietened, the blood can be washed off and the rubble will not forever obstruct his vision. That is wishful thinking I suppose, for wars survived leave lasting scars and genocides witnessed will never let you go.
The words have forasken us but we continue to write because the brave souls of Gaza continue to bleed. It is as if we are part of an endless funeral procession. The grief comes in waves, it ebbs and flows but mostly it crashes onto our hearts with great force and leaves us breathless. Helpless.
My thoughts are in Palestine this morning as they are every morning, and with young Motaz as he questions all that we have made real for him.
