Society & Politics

To Orlando, from Paris: Be Strong, Stay Strong

To Orlando, from Paris

The hammer strikes again, and my heart bleeds. After San Bernardino, after Boston. After Paris, struck twice, on the other side of the Atlantic. After Brussels. Further south, after those countries we sometimes struggle to simply put in a map. Muslim countries. After the countless voice pleading into the void, "Enough, enough, enough."



All of them falling, one after the other, in the face of that monster who plans on annihilating us all.



And what a monster. We give it a name, like Isis, like terrorism, like Muslims, even, sickeningly, but if these are Muslims, why would a Christian preacher claim "A man reaps what he sows" after the 50 victims of Orlando turn out to be homosexual? Will others add they also had it coming to them for being Hispanics in America?



There is your monster. Not crouching the confinements of the Middle East, not coiled within the beliefs of any single community, and all the more dangerous because it is present within all of us. The monster that has us saying "Let us sort, let us sort. Let us purify the nation. Let us cleanse this country of all our undesirables. Let's purge our great land, of all those who do not belong."


And look where that has gotten us in the past.



What is that monster? That thing that feeds on fear, but that isn't fear itself. Fear nourishes both the bridges and the walls. Fear is what causes us to act. But the manner in which we do, that is determined by our adherence to the abomination of hatred.



One of them is evil, so they all must be.


To Orlando, from Paris: Be Strong, Stay Strong

If we cannot make the distinction, how do we keep our loved ones safe?



But to the one who is sorted, with no better reason that he belongs to a community with a misbehaving individual, what is the message he understands? No one is perfect. No community as a whole, is perfect. And yet they mean to destroy all of us. So, here and now, we have no choice left, we have to fight.



And here the monster uncoils.



There have been so many walls. Born from conflict, built out of fear, constructed not by fools, but by people who gave in to the monster's tune. Have they worked? They might have kept the masses from crossing, they might have simplified the state relations. They tore families apart. They tore communities apart. They were a scar in the heart of nations, of continents, and in the hearts of men. Every man, woman and child that has lived on the edge of that wall will tell you. The barriers kill. Any man, woman or child that has had to make the choice of belonging to one of two communities, because they could not belong to both, will tell you. The barriers kill. Anyone, facing the systematic rejection of a community to which they do not belong, simply for not belonging, will tell you. The barriers kill.



So love thy neighbour.



This message, present in every religion known to man, repeated countlessly until it is known to all, lays forgotten in the precise moment it serves its only purpose. Do we want war? Should we live in fear of getting murdered in our beds, after murdering in the beds of others? The monster would relish to such sickening irony. Should we kill before being killed?


To Orlando, from Paris: Be Strong, Stay Strong

Or should we follow the hard path? The torturous walk of reconciliation, in spite of the pain, in spite of the anger, in spite of the fear. Words that will never be repeated enough. We are stronger together. In the face of ever-growing rage and hatred, if we do not stand together, we die. We die by the tens, and they perish by the hundreds. They'll murder us by the thousands, and we by the millions. In the end, the body count is there for all.



Let one madman kill fifty, seventy, eighty individual souls. Without looking at who that man might be, without looking at who the victims might be, because it makes no matter. Because despite what he might claim, the madman serves only one monster, and that monster has no flag. No religion, no gender, no color, nothing that would serve to isolate it from the innocent, the frightened and the hurt. These too bear no flag. No religion, no gender, no color. We can all be victims and monsters in turn. We can all destroy and be destroyed, and let the song of hatred ring soundly around us, and take every step of this dance of death, until the silence resumes and the land settles in ashes.



There is no war when everyone is dead. No love, either. No joy, no laughter. No fear, no hatred. No danger. No safety. But so many memories.

To Orlando, from Paris: Be Strong, Stay Strong
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