Please Stop

Lazy morning sun, a slow breath and Fairuz’s voice it drifting in the air. A normal summer morning in Syria? No, this is a small Syrian house in the English country side trying to get home.

No matter how hard I try, I cannot be home these days. I travel there, I talk to the people there and I search every day for a trace of news about my homeland that is not talking about killing and destruction but every day I fail miserably and disappointment and sadness just grow more and more in me.

Where are you my homeland, you’ve been drowned at the hands of your children who forgot that they are ripping a country apart and not leaving anything to their children and their children’s children.

Usually, when I think of Syria at summer time, I think of unforgettable summer laughs, family gatherings, and the freedom of summer break with fairuz’s voice starting the day and Um Kulthom’s flowing through to the early hours of the day. A light, simple life that people returned to no matter what the day carried. Trouble melted away at the warmth of a gentle smile on my mother’s face.

Today, that smile, like the gentleness of the night and the warmth of life has gone, covered by screams of hate and a drive for self-destruction sweeping across my Syria.

I’ve tried to be open minded for both sides but how can anyone remain open-minded when all around him/her have decided to shut their ears, heart and minds to all but their own voice? Everyone is shouting louder and louder to get heard and now we can only hear noise and nothing else. There are no thoughts that can be carried across all the chaos and one wonders if this noise will ever stop or will it continue to work itself into a frenzy that consumes it with all those around it, country and people?

These days, I feel like screaming loud enough to make everyone else just shut up and stop arguing for a moment, listen to the silence and to their own thoughts before they talk to others. Unfortunately, my scream isn’t loud enough and everyone else stopped caring about the screams!

Today, I’m just filled with sadness that cannot be shacked away. Listening to Fairuz is a sweet torture reminding me of a sweater, simpler and happier times.

Today, innocence is lost and the cut runs so deep in every Syrian heart and one wonders how will it heal, if ever.

Ramadan is a week away, a time for getting together and visiting family and friends. Already the people that hijacked Friday want to hijack the whole month and irrelevant of the righteousness of the cause they’re fighting for in the eyes of some or the lack of it in the eyes of others, they need to stop.

It is more important to have this time to heal; we’re hurting so much we need to heal before we tear ourselves and each other apart. It is now more than just a possibility that we may end up doing just that, breaking the notion of Syria into a million piece with no way of putting the pieces together again.

I am the silent masses; I am the Syrian which they call coward or complicit for not taking sides; I’m the one that both sides try to win and both sides have been losing; I am the one being torn apart between the two screaming sides and they need to stop.

Please, just stop, give people a chance to breathe again

Please stop in the name of all that you consider holy, the month, the cause the country.

From all of us, please stop!