Witness
Author: Naznin Sultana, University of Hyderabad, India
I don’t know how to hold all of this. Can I? Is it possible for any human being?
I can’t.
This is impossible.
Every night I sit with my phone in my hand, my hands start shaking, trembling. Tears don’t stop coming out.
That’s how it is supposed to be.
Staring at another image; a street I don’t recognize, a child I will never meet, a parent carrying a silence I can’t imagine. And every time, something inside me loosens, like a knot coming undone in the worst possible way.
A little boy covered in the dust; eyes wide open like he doesn’t understand why the whole world turned against him. What did he do?
Is it because he wanted to go to school? Is it because he wanted to play with his friends? Is it because he wanted to run in the olive gardens? Is it because he wanted to go to market with his grandparents? Is it because he wanted to live like any other child in this world?
What did he do?
He kept calling his mother. Over and over. His mother is lying down just beside him. He cries. A tiny voice trying to push through the sound of explosions. A tiny cry wants to wake up his mother. A tiny move wants to make his mother sit and talk. A tiny push wants to make his mother breathe again.
What did he do?
Oh! He was just walking through the lane with the shack to bring some grains. He just left his mother in the house while he went to bring some food. They didn’t eat anything for three days. He couldn’t even reach the grocery store. He walked into the next neighborhood lane towards the grocery store. He heard the heaviest explosion nearby. He immediately ran. Came home. But where is home? He can only see bricks and dust around there. He saw lying bodies. The silent bodies. The bodies which get silent once and then never move again.
What did he do?
His mother was not letting him go and bring the grains. But he was hungry and so was his mother. His father had already left few days before and never came back. They say he got detained. It was only him and his mother. They also say that they harass women more. So, he wanted to go. To bring some food. He hugged his mother and promised to come back soon. But now, he only sees the silent body of his mother. He gets closer to the body full of dust. He tries to clean the dust off and sees his mother’s abaya.
What did he do?
He wanted to escape hunger, not death. For them, death is inevitable. Every morning, they wake up knowing today may be the last day. They are not scared of death. They are scared of living. For them, death is liberation. Death is the freedom from the terrible life they are living on this earth. He was trying to escape from hunger. Because hunger doesn’t kill them, it makes them suffer. It numbs their brain. It makes them stop thinking. It makes it easier to capture them, torture them. It makes their lives more miserable.
What did he do? What did he do to witness his mother’s death?
Was it a crime for him to bring food? Was it wrong to leave behind his mother in the house?
He doesn’t know. He is still trying to understand.
He is still trying to think like the old man. The old man who lives on eating grass, cactus. The old man who lost all of his family members. The old man who witnessed every child of him dying in front of his eyes. Both of them wondering what they do to deserve such human cruelty? What did they do not to receive any help?
The old man is above 80 and the little boy is just below 10. The younger generation lives in the same misery like the older generations. Perhaps time has changed for the rest of the world, but for them it is same. The clock is just ticking around the same repetitive cyclical sphere without making any real difference there.
But the world has moved faster. Even after seeing the cruel videos.
I tell myself not to look.
I become selfish at one moment.
But the cry gets louder.
The cruelty becomes more intense.
There are more shredded bodies.
There are more blasts.
There is more blood flowing like a small river trying to find its way towards the sea. The sea, the only place inside the country where they can be borderless. The sea where they see vastness outside of their prisoned lives. The sea where they don’t have to see the sky through barbed wires, the prison cells. The sea shows them the vast clear sky.
But in their city, they see more smoke, fire and dust. There is more unfolding terror. And I see through my 6-inch mobile screen.
And then I can’t breathe for moment.
And wonder about myself, “How can you be so selfish!”
There is a heaviness that settles in the chest—not dramatic, not poetic—more like… a stone of guilt you didn’t realize you’d swallowed.
I don’t know what to do.
I don’t know what to do with this helplessness.
I watch these parents running into broken buildings,
screaming their children’s names,
and the cry gets inside you. It claws at every part of your heart that knows how to love, how to fear losing someone dearest. It makes your eyes so teary that you can’t see the screen anymore. And the worst part is that you are crying in safety, in a warm room, with a light on, without hearing the sounds of explosions nearby. While there are the grieving ones holding the dead bodies in the dark.
I keep thinking:
How is this fair? Why do I get to live a comfortable life and they are there?
These thoughts break me every time.
I don’t even know if crying helps anyone. If crying helps to stop the killings. If crying helps to stop this barbarism. If crying helps to stop the genocides. My screen often gets blurry, but does it help anyone?
I feel useless, small and pathetic. It narrows me down to thinking about my shallowness.
I keep praying to Allah, half-formed, random little prayers, seeking forgiveness for my own self-indulgence.