It is not only me who is bothered by watching the bloody news from the Arab and Islamic world, which is full of disorders; our little children too are, as they sit beside us hearing, observing, asking, crying and feeling the pain of others, including children.
One morning, I woke up my ten-year-old son to get him ready for school. To encourage him to get up I looked at the window and said, “Look at the clouds and the sight of lightning cleaving the sky,” as I live in the southern hemisphere, where it is winter. The boy suddenly said, terrified, “Do not mention lightning, when I saw it last night I had a terrible dream,”. This encouraged me to ask him about his dream.
“I dreamed that I was standing in a public park where you stood at the entrance. Suddenly a bomb blew off, shaking the whole entrance. I started screaming and calling for you. I realised that the explosion was strong and not simple,” my son said. Then I woke him up just to see that I was fine and it was all just a dream, or more specifically, a nightmare.
I hugged my son to calm him and to get him ready for a new day. Then my mind boggled. I started thinking of the children of Syria whose entire lives, not just their dreams, have turned into hell; their toys have become battens they use while playing the roles of the Syrian Army and the Free Syrian Army. Therefore, a political predicament was formed as one people start killing each other, whereas neither victim nor victimiser knows why he is in his position.
I later turned on the television to watch news of a new massacre with chemical weapons in Ghouta, Damascus. The residents of this area were killed while the whole world was watching. Our hearts are full of pain as we watch this gas destroying Syrian lives.
I then recalled an international report that was published by international news agencies during the difficult period that preceded the chemical massacre. The report shed light on how bloody conflicts affect the mental health of children in the Arab Spring Countries.
This sinful scene of civilians being attacked by nerve gas amid negligence from the international community threatens not only humanity or the children’s mental or physical health, but also the mental health of the international community due to the absence of humanity.
Our children get frightened just as they watch the news or listen to an innocent Syrian girl getting startled because of an explosion behind her while she was singing amputates her friend’s leg.
Another explosion at two mosques in Lebanon added more insult to injury. It added more pains to the ones Arabs already experience in Syria, Egypt and Libya, Tunisia and Iraq.
“Egypt! This is new,” that was how our children reacted.
Who oppressed whom? And who killed whom? What happened? Why mosques and places of worship being destroyed? A child’s question is so hard. “What is left mom?” my son asked. Like politics like life, easy abstainer is harder than any other abstainer is.
All this happens and we mourn our bloody Arab reality. These realities have taken mercy out of many hearts, that increased divisions in every country, took mercy out of our hearts and divided many hearts, making us mourns a dead international conscience, one that conspires to abuse human beings and crush children’s rights. These rights were usurped in fields that were never made for war.
We as well mourn the innocence of our children that turned their dreams into nightmares. Our children grow old before their time because of the pains they experience, pains that take the stead of hope in their lives.
