[Reader-list] Words After Violence

[taraprakash]

I think you forgot to offer an unequivocal condemnation of what happened. 
Thankfully not everyone will become speechless. It was henous,  gruesome, 
barbaric, inhuman. It deserves condemnation without any nuances. Those who 
can take some of the most powerful people of the world hostage, it won't be 
difficult at all for them to attack and take hostages in our schools, 
colleges, universities and other such institutions. Somebody needs to root 
out this evil that divides human beings and those people who  nurse such 
hateful feelings.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Lawrence Liang" <lawrence at altlawforum.org>
To: "Sarai Reader-list" <reader-list at sarai.net>
Sent: Friday, November 28, 2008 5:21 AM
Subject: [Reader-list] Words After Violence


> The madness of what has happened in Bombay leaves us speechless, even as 
> the
> media din around evacuates words from their meaning.
> So it only appropriate that we borrow words to remind us, int the midst of
> death, what it means to live
>
> Lawrence
>
>
>
> On January 11, 1998, unidentified gunmen entered a movie theater
> and a small mosque in Sidi Ahmed near Algiers and massacred
> 120 men, women, and children at close range during Algeria's
> ongoing civil conflict.
>
>
> *Disbeliever
>
>
> *By the limping of the people of Iraq
> By the sound of frantic running in Qana, in Kosovo
> By the men and boys of Hama massacred
> By the swollen bodies in a river in Rwanda
> and Afghani women and the writers of Algiers,
> I am a disbeliever
>
> in everything that refuses to kiss
> full on the lips the ones still living
> and receive them into the bosom of the self,
> no matter the religion or the nation or race
> I am a disbeliever in everything
> that does not say "How was the movie? I love you"
>
> I need a body outside my life that can travel and kneel
> on the sidewalk beside a movie theater in Algiers
> over the bodies of the supple children
> who will never be my children's playmates or marry them
> over the bodies of the men and the women
> who will never write a letter,
> will never phone me from Algiers:
> "How was the movie? I love you. I love you."
>
> I need time outside this history
> where I can whisper in the ear of each of them,
> By God, you will never be forgotten
> By God, I will make sure the world
> buries its face in your beautiful hair,
> sings to you, learns your name and your music,
> lifts you up in the crook of its arm like a gift
>
> I am a disbeliever
> in everything but the purity of the bodies
> of the men and women--with or without the veil,
> with or without the markings of the right identity--
> in everything but the suppleness of children
> I am a disbeliever in every scripture
> in the world that leaves out
> "How was the movie? I love you. I love you."
>
>
> *Mohja Kahf
> *
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