HOW MANY ALANS NEED TO BE WASHED ASHORE?

 



“I said to you,

‘Hold my hand, nothing bad will happen’.”

(Lines from ‘Sea Prayer’ by Khaled Hosseini)


 

I did not know who Khaled Hosseini was until I was gifted with his beautiful novel – ‘The Kite Runner’ - by my young son. It was some ten years ago.

Khaled Husseini’s stories come from the helpless plight of refugees from the war-torn areas like Afghanistan, Syria, Iran, Iraq and such. He himself was born in Kabul (Afghanistan) and ended up as a refugee in the US…

But, importantly, Khaled Husseini ended up as a sensitive storyteller of the contemporary world. His stories don’t leave us the same… I mean, they help us become better humans; yes, a lot more sensitive to the cruelty of war and destruction…

Rightly, this gentle soul has been appointed by the United Nations as its Goodwill Ambassador for the cause of refugees…

It is a tough task – a mission impossible – in these most insensitive times that we live in…

Do we listen to the voices of men and women like Khaled Husseini when the toxic news has left us all polarized between ‘us’ and ‘them’?... Today, we see ourselves polarized between Israel and Palestine…

Not really… We seem polarized between the sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea!

Inspired by the heart-wrenching images of the 3-year-old Syrian boy, Alan Kurdi’s dead body, which was washed ashore Turkish sealine… Khaled Husseini penned down (in 2017) a moving poem. It was like a letter written by a father trying to protect his little boy and escape to an unknown land, through an unpredictable sea… This heart-wrenching poem/letter/ballad – whatever you wish to call it – can be finished reading in ten minutes flat…

Did I say ‘ten minutes'?

This ‘ten-minute text’ is presented so beautifully through watercolors… that, it keeps haunting us for life, with the question: “How insensitive we all can be… How dead!”




“When will they ever learn?” Pete Seeger, another sensitive songwriter and singer asked in his equally-haunting ballad – ‘Where Have All the Flowers Gone?’





Decades have passed by…

Has Israel learnt anything from Hitler’s Gas Chambers – what has been described, in the darkest letters, as ‘Holocaust’?

It is senseless asking – ‘When will THEY ever learn?’... It makes some sense if we seriously ask – ‘When will WE ever learn?’

“Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it.”  After so many decades since American Philosopher, George Santayana, warned, a thousand holocausts and a million Alan Kurdi’s seem not enough to make mankind take note of it…

Please watch this…






GERALD D’CUNHA

 

Pic’s: 1. BBC NEWS 2. www.scribd.com 

Videos: 1. jasmine e 2. The Guardian

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