Cruel jokes of a cruel fate

No yesterday and no tomorrow. No past and no future, it's almost like they had never been. I find myself trapped in a present through which I cannot see, not forwards and not backwards. All the places I had once before known have disappeared into absolute nothingness. No evidence that they had ever existed but faint memories through curtains of blood and walls of shattering screams of human suffering. I ran away from that, I ran away like many of you, and like many of you intend or wish to do.

From the fear, from the almost monstrous disrespect to human life, I ran away for myself. Believing that I was given this life to live it, never to have it added as another statistic on a magazine page, never to have myself put down for no purpose at all. And from thereon I indulged myself with life, with minor loss of purpose perhaps, but with no less zest to live.


The words of a dear friend ring alive within …

"What I've seen from life made me believe it's just a way through. What matters is what we take to the grave"

And they're deeds, I suppose.

To live the day in total oblivion to life itself, to live the day like there is no tomorrow, and knowing that there might as well never be one. To live the day running from what lies beneath your own shadows, running from the hand that stabs or the eye that aims. To want to help those who appreciate no help, to want to help live at the price of your own life, to fear for others filling the void of your own life and driving you forward. It's almost sacred, almost divine and as selfless as humanly possible. Yet goes unseen, goes unappreciated even by its receptors.

To have a cold hand triggering a bullet through your brain while you have been working for those hands and others to live better is no way to die. To drive through twilight zones, risking the one soul you have to rescue others is beyond me. The courage it takes, the altruism, the determination and motivation and devotion is beyond me and I dare say beyond all of us.

You and I and many others have escaped, tried to or still hope and try to. But how many of us stayed there and stood in the line of fire, instead of staying and hating the world for it, hiding as well as possible? How many of us risked our own lives to safe lives? We have all thought life is precious, but none of us considered other lives than our own with the thought. The empty words coming from shelters, from safe exiles and new homes don't matter. The compassion and campaigning and writing and public-speaking, blabber and jitter and nonsense and absolutely nothing it is, stealing the lights from those who deserve them, those who work in the shadows yet achieve more than they have ever taken credit for.

I'm one of the few who had lost hope in all goodness in mankind, yet I realize now that there's still a good few of them. And they don't waste their lives on words. They have put their own lives on halt, on the fire line, to rescue others. I only pray and hope I will one day have the courage and devotion to spend the remainder of my life helping those who are really in need. Doing more than showing my feelings for a living. I guess I will always live wanting to find myself driven that way, with such oblivion to life itself. It's almost consecrated.

If you pray, mention them in your prayers; if you hope, then keep your fingers crossed for no malice to ever come their way. For them to never leave behind a widow or an orphan because of their own devotion to save others from being widows or orphans. To never be left behind to die, or never be lead forward to die, in their determination to prevent people from dying.

You might wonder who they are, but if you look around, you might see them. And perhaps you already know who I mean. And it's a cruel joke of a cruel fate if you can remember those on the magazine covers on and offline, and not those who do the real labour, those who recieve the bullets and those who fall in their struggle. It's an even more cruel joke if you remember people like Ayatullah, whatever made him such a thing, Sistani or Al Hakim...What good have they ever done? Aren't they practically surrounded by paid-for guards to dodge bullets?! Too haugty to reach a hand to ease anybody's pain?!


And to my friend, you I will always remember with reverence, whether you're in this world or beyond.