“It is Eid today. Muslims around the world are celebrating, as they should. Happy Eid Everyone!
But I am in tears today, which I am trying to hide from my family – and from my extended family of man, as they say.
Because I cry for the victims of earthquakes – in Haiti and elsewhere.
And for the victims of tsunamis and Katrina, who, after all this time, are yet to be made whole.
And I cry for the victims of floods in Pakistan. All 21 million of them according to the United Nations.
And I cry for the nameless, countless victims of the endless “wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan. All the wounded, the dead and the dying. All the widows and the orphans.
Their screams, groans, moans and sobs fill my ears and burn my brain. Are they not people, I ask myself. Are those little ones not children, I ask.
In response, my tears gush in bigger torrents.
And I cry with shame for a humanity that would not cry for them. Or would scale its tears to their names and identities; their race and religion; their ethnicity and nationality; and to the fine technicalities of their own geopolitics and so-called national interests..
But it is Eid. Everybody is happy. As they should be.
Merry Eid Everybody!” (Dr. Pasha)