Today is Eid Al-Fitr, an occasion to feel joy and be glad. But this year I approach the holiday like a sleepwalker, stumbling through a never-ending nightmare. The city of Jeddah is filled with bright lights and merrymakers, but I have no festive spirit within me.
As a journalist, year after year I have been forced to bear witness to man’s inhumanity to mankind. When I first began, it was a job, a challenge to report the better story, to get there first and dig deepest. Details of destruction were nothing more than words on a page, may Allah forgive my ignorance and youth.
Now my consciousness is overwhelmed with the litany of daily horrors. The sad stories that appear in Arab News are but a drop in the bucket of global misery. Four Palestinian children are killed in one day. We print the photo of one. An Afghani child loses his legs to a mine. We don’t report it. There’s no space on our pages. He’s just another victim, one of many. Chechens are dying by the dozens. International news agencies no longer choose to hear their screams, see their tears or even remember that they exist.
Not only is the agony flashing across monitors in the newsroom, people from near and far reach out directly for assistance. The Internet has changed the way we communicate. Every hour, pleas for aid arrive through e-mail. “Find a way to educate my son,” writes one mother. “My baby needs surgery or she will die,” writes another. “My son has been detained by the Israelis. He is our only support,” explains a third. I try to help them all, but I cannot work miracles, and the need is tremendous.
So I go out and walk to give my mind a rest. Meandering through a shopping mall last week I saw mothers happily buying dresses for their daughters. Unbidden, my mind was filled with images of Palestinian children dressed in rags. I passed a confectionery filled with cakes and sweets of every kind. In a trick of light, the dirty, desperate faces of Muslim refugees appeared as shadows on the shop’s windows. Teens loitered on corners, laughing and telling tales. I thought of the young Palestinians, whose only crime was breathing, detained in concentration camps by the Israelis.
“Be happy!” my friends tell me. “It’s Eid.” Instead, my soul mourns. I am surrounded by a society on a constant quest to shop and spend. People here never seem to have enough, no matter how much they have. In the final days of Ramadan the souks were packed till 3 a.m. What happened to the concept of praying on Ramadan nights for forgiveness? Where was the time for soul searching and quiet contemplation? When I opened my mouth to object to all the materialism in our midst, people told me to lighten up, that I was taking life far too seriously. “Don’t sweat the small stuff,” they advised.
Bullets and bombs are definitely small. The minds of many politicians are often even smaller. A baby starved to death becomes really tiny. Explosives can blow homes and people to little bits. Foreign policy in some nations has been reduced to sound bites. In our world, hope has shriveled and peace has been dwarfed by war. But don’t worry about the small stuff! It’s the big picture that’s really depressing.
This morning, while many of us were dressed in fine raiment, touching our foreheads to soft rugs and returning to lavish breakfasts and warm beds, around the world millions of people were caught up in inescapable suffering. Just closing our eyes to their misery will not make it disappear. Sadly, we do not even have to look far to find those in need. Families in our own land live in poverty, clinging to the scraps of their dignity in a nation of abundance.
Our world is a troubled place, filled with loss and pain and tears. Is this all the future holds for us? Eid Al-Fitr is about sharing our goodness with others. Let this day be a new beginning in your life. Take a vow to reach out to all with kindness, tolerance and compassion. Remember the joy of giving. Nurture your spirituality. Perhaps you’ll find that caring for others brings more pleasure and rewards than caring about yourself ever did. Sounds too sentimental and idealistic? Does a world filled with violence and fear sound better? Eid Mubarak.
Arab News Opinion 5 December 2002
