The Bahraini media outlet Gulf Daily News today published a piece by the Dean of St Christopher’s Cathedral, the Very Reverend Dr Richard Fermer, commemorating the first anniversary of 7th October in poetry by an Israeli, a Palestinian and a British poet.
“I’m not sure
if I could go back to life this time
A morning run, bike trip, party
without the face of the dead
haunting me
I’m not sure
if I could come back alive this time
An empty baby bed, a blanket
coloured red.”
Thus begins Israeli poet, Adei Keissar’s poem “October”.
This week saw the first anniversary of the cold-blooded massacre and hostage-taking of innocent, unarmed Jewish civilians by Hamas. It predictably launched a train of violence which has not ended. The cycle of violence, though, began long, long ago in what the Palestinians call the “Nakba” (“catastrophe”) during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, and even further back for Jews into an ancient history of exile and persecution, and the more recent shadow of the Holocaust.
The cries of self-justification and blame can cloud perception. What is clear is that as onlookers, to the unspeakable horrors of 7th October and the loss of life that has followed, it is impossible to be neutral about the killing of innocent civilians of whatever race or language. The point is brought out in Nigerian-born, British poet, Ben Okri’s poem “Gaza”:
“How did we become so deaf to the death
Of innocent children and their mothers?
How did we get to measure the value
Of one death against another, with one
Worth a thousand of the other?
Surely the heart of the world has died.
Surely we have turned to stone in our veins….
There ought to be no religion that lets
Us be indifferent to all that suffering.”
We, the onlookers—and I write as an onlooker in the Middle East—we seem so powerless to act, with our governments caught in complex geo-political webs and the extremists on both sides still of the mind that war is the way to a solution! Yet despite the numbing effect of the passage of time, the churning of the news cycles, and the monotony of ongoing violence, as Okri writes, our umbilical cord of interconnectedness cannot be severed:
“There are in truth no distances in the spirit
Of humanity. Any great injustice makes
The sleep of the world howl. We breathe in
The destruction of lives that we don’t see.”
In this world, we may know one thing: nothing lasts for ever. Beyond lament and protest, this is our hope: war must end; life must triumph. It is what makes Okri glimpse at a life beyond:
“I see a new future is possible there.
I see the lands fertile in tough
Invaluable collaboration.
I see that the desert will come alive
With music. I see two peoples finding
A new way. I see that this miracle
Is the only pragmatic path.”
Our task, the task of peacemakers, then, becomes to believe and proclaim this, just like the mothers of the hostages refuse to accept that their sons and daughters be abandoned, to give up on life:
“Who would dream it, make it
Real, while the bombs flower
And the children weep?
Who will find a
Way instead of
Taking a side?” (Okri, “Gaza”)
In his poem “Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear”, the Gazan poet, Mosab Abu Toha recalls the magical words that his mother once whispered and sung into his ear, as life around him is now dumbed by the cacophony of war. Yet, he can imagine an act of healing, with the gentle touch that re-opens the ear:
“Spray the perfume of your smiles on the incision.
Inject the song of life into my veins to wake me up.
Gently beat the drum so my mind may dance with yours,
my doctor, day and night.”
Life will not be overcome by death, it will triumph. This is an act of faith.
Yet, at this time of anniversary, we must remember and mourn, and pray for peace. As Keissar writes of the day after 7th October:
“In the morning I opened a window
the sun was shining in the sky
the silence filled the empty street
I’m not sure
if I could ever hear silence
that doesn’t hide a disaster within.”
“The doorway into the silent land is a wound”, writes the spiritual writer Martin Laird, “Silence lays bare this wound.” He goes on to say: “The paradox, however, is that healing is revealed when we discover that our wound and the wound of God are one wound” (Into the Silent Land: A Guide to the Christian Practice of Contemplation).