The Deceptive Beauty

I woke up this morning to a beautiful, cool, slightly overcast day. The billowing curtains in my bedroom and the softly rustling leaves of my bouganvellia and lush birds of paradise I admire from my balcony remind me of that soothing ocean breeze from my carefree, innocent childhood days in Penang.

The peace, I am quickly reminded, belies the suffering and the bloodshed halfway around the world, where my fellow sisters, mothers, fathers, brothers and babies are under siege in Gaza, cowering in fear, terror, hunger, thirst...lying injured and trapped in their homes and in severe pain, with no help in sight due to the inhumanity of the US-Israeli wardogs' armies, made up of sub-humans who possess not an ounce of compassion which differentiates human beings from them.

When my father died on the 31st of December 1989, I remember taking a walk outside my apartment in Sacramento, just to get some human contact and clear my head...and the first thing that hit me when I looked up was the pure beauty of the blue skies. Despite my pain, I couldn't help being struck by the loveliness of the breezy, crisp, clear, fog-free winter's day. And I wondered to myself. How can Eba not be here anymore, and yet the sky is so incredibly blue?

It was surreal.

The lament by this grandmother below who is long gone by now, tells me that I wasn't alone in feeling what I did. Her words are surely being repeated by other mothers and grandmothers, fathers and children all over Gaza today. On this starkly beautiful, winter's day...

Extract from "Beirut to Jerusalem":

Hajjar, a 72 year old grandmother who was in South Lebanon at the time of the Sabra-Shatila holocaust in 1982, was very worried so she walked 20 kilometres - all the way from South Lebanon to Shatila camp. And when she arrived she knew her family was gone. Hajjar was mourning for her family but I (Dr Ang Swee Chai, a witness to the horror) went in to her house because she's Munir's grandmother and I asked her what have you to say, Hajjar? Then she broke out and told me all this in Arabic:

Whats there left to say? There is nothing left to say.
Our flowers still blossom and our oranges give fragrance,
our sparrows sing their usual songs,
yet my children are no where to be found.

Beirut - you took all I had,
and you took my last important life,
my heart lies dead on your streets.

Abu Zuhair, my fine young son
was cruelly cut off from his roots on your soil.
Abu Zuhair - you who found your way from Tel al-Zaatar
with a Kalashnikov in your hand, to meet me Shatila,
how come you are slaughtered like a sheep?
What have I got to say?

Crow of ill-omen - please, who told you of my whereabouts?
Bearers of coffins, please move slowly
so that I can see my loved ones once again
Oh God! Please wait, just wait and Your Will be done?

How I envy those of you who were around when my
children died. Did you let them die thirsty?
Or were you kind enough to give then a drink?

Life - what life is like to us?
Our hearts have died and our tears have dried
for all the men and women who fell.

God All Mighty give us patience,
and our children - may our love be a lantern to Your path
and may God show me the holy way

Doctor, please go away -
you have reopened all our wounds,
we are so weary, what is there to say?

Remains of Hajjar's 27 family members who escaped another massacre by the Israelis in 1978 in Tel Al-Zaatar only to die in Sabra.

Read the whole story as witnessed by our fellow Malaysian, Dr Ang Swee Chai, who initially believed that the PLO was a terrorist organisation, just as many now view Hamas and the other Muslim resistance groups; when the REAL terrorists reign supreme - the US and Israel - and continue their unabated, world sanctioned slaughter over the years... (click on the title below):

FROM BEIRUT TO JERUSALEM
EYE-WITNESS TO SABRA-SHATILA MASSACRE

Dr Ang Swee Chai:

"The slaughter of unarmed children, women, the aged and the infirm was shocking. For me, I was doubly outraged that I had to discover the truth about a brave and generous people only through their deaths. Until then, I never knew Palestinian refugees existed. As a fundamentalist Christian, I had been a supporter of Israel, hated Arabs and saw the Palestinian Liberation Organisation as terrorists to be loathed and feared."