A Headless Chicken

May 18, 2002 by
Filed under: Witness to History 

May 18, 2002

Dear George,

Yesterday I took an hour out of my precious time away from serving our country to listen to what the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State had to say. I was so moved by his “Political Giberation” that I did not even care to notice or remember his name.

While our country took no benefit of me taking the time out of serving the people, I came upon a very important finding. Having listening to his theme of & “Today We Are All Sharons,” I now have no doubt in my mind to why we are jumping all over the place like a chicken that lost its head.

The civilization which you chose as an enemy to which we all owe what we have and enjoy today started with one word. The word if we all care to go by we won’t be where we are today.

The word is: READ, and our first assignment is the following:

Walk In The Shoes of a Suicide Bomber
by Nadeem Al-Atheem
April 16, 2002
Picture this: You wake up in the middle of the night to the sound of your younger sister screaming. You jump out of the single bed that you share with your four other brothers and run to the door. Your younger brother wakes up and begins to cry. You run back and try to calm him down, but he just won’t stop. Your other brothers wake up. You hear fumbling in the room next to yours. Your father is yelling and cursing. Your mother can’t be heard. Your younger sister continues to cry and scream. The fear and pain you sense in the tone of her voice leaves you mortified. Someone else is screaming. It’s a man, but he is not speaking in your native tongue. The man yells. You open your door a little and sneak out. Your other brothers remain in the room huddled in the corner. All four are crying. One has his hand clasped over the mouth of the youngest in order to silence his screams. You walk over to the door of the adjacent room. The door is wide open. Your head peaks through. You are only able to look around for a minute before a large hand slaps your head and knocks you unconscious to the ground. However, before you are slapped your innocent eyes witness the unbearable. Your mother lies naked on the floor with blood spilling from her head. She doesn’t move. Her legs are spread open in a bloody mess. Your father is kneeling on the ground with his arms and feet tied. He looks toward the bed in horror tears streaming down his face. A man dressed in a soldier’s uniform stands above him with a gun pressed against his temple. You glimpse at the bed and freeze. There lays your naked thirteen-year-old sister screaming for your father’s help as a soldier lies between her bare legs. Another holds her steady by pushing down on her shoulders. She screams so loud that her voice can no longer be heard. You can’t do a thing. It’s too late. Everything turns black.

For the rest of your life you live with these horrible memories. Everywhere you turn, you see young men and women wearing the same exact uniforms that your family’s murderers wore with pride. Every corner you turn, you must present identification to members of the same force. You are spit on. You are denied an education and a job. You are forced to drive only on streets designated for people of your own race. Your property is stolen. You are classified as a secondary citizen. Every day you hear true life stories similar to the history of your horrible past. You are denied access to clean water, electricity, books, etc. You attend the funerals of men, women, and children on a weekly basis. Mass graves are not uncommon. You watch children die of simple colds, and young mothers slip into death because of a lack of painkillers during birth. Public strip searches, land confiscations, and arrests on secret evidence are common.

Whole towns of people are expelled at a time. Homes are demolished. You have no weapons to fight those that inflict this horror on you and your people. Worst of all, the world is not blind to your existence. The truth is known. Kings, queens, presidents, and prime ministers are all aware of the dread that exists not only in your life, but also in the lives of an entire population. No one does a thing. Greed, money, power, and oil silence the world’s sense of right & wrong, good & evil, moral and immoral. You are ignored. No one listens, and if they do, they don’t care.

Imagine that this is your life. This is your existence. This is your everything. You are socially, politically, economically, and religiously oppressed. You don’t want to marry; you don’t want to have children. You want to spare the next generation the grief of living a life similar to your own. You want to scream. You want to cry. You want to explode. You want to die. It’s not fair that God only gives people one life, and this is yours yet you’re proud. You wouldn’t trade you culture, heritage, or land for the world. You decide to stand your ground and defend it until death. Fight your oppressor, and do what little you can to weaken its evil grip. You decide that there is only one way. You must sacrifice your life in order to give the innocent children of your land the opportunities that were denied to you. You understand that solely you cannot make a difference. But together, your people can. Someone must break the cycle of fear and stand tall against all that is wrong and all that is evil. You strap explosives to your chest, cross enemy lines, and explode. The world cannot ignore you now. Your self-sacrifice will be the wakeup call that the world needs in order to intervene and save an entire race from genocide.

KEEP ON READING…

Sincerely,
Nidal Sakr
Miami, Florida

 

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