By FATAMA ZOHRA
January 28, 2017
“A war in a distant land seems of no attention, but if your child was between oceans of torture and insults, would you not raise a hand to protect them from drowning. “
Our country fights over the rights of an unborn being, as we neglect those who are already born. They are not our children, not our nation’s children, but they are children of the world which make them no different in comparison to any daughter or son—they themselves are daughters or sons.
You have to understand,
That no one puts their children in a boat
Unless the water is safer than the land
Refugee. A word that sends shivers down one’s spine, while the entities belonging to the word are shivering at night themselves. A word that we bury underneath fear and grime, while we seem to not even exert an ounce of effort to understand the horror behind each waking moment the entities belonging to the word face. We do not even understand the literal grime that seeps through their bodies and into their sleep. The grime that plagues their dreams, turning them into nightmares. We sit at home, blanket around, mug in hand, without a speck of compassion for those who find the wind to be their only warmth. Perhaps we don’t know how those entities feel because we have a home.
We say we are doing God’s work when we protect the bloodshed of a woman’s uterus, but then falter to own up to character to fight against actual bloodshed, battle wounds, severed limbs, and mutilated futures.
We hide behind a mask of fog, giving them the air of poison. We hide behind religious backings, when we know that your God would weep tears that would rid the world of any drought while watching what is happening. We say we are doing God’s work when we protect the bloodshed of a woman’s uterus, but then falter to own up to character to fight against actual bloodshed, battle wounds, severed limbs, and mutilated futures. The façade of religion ends so quickly when hatred can be used and won using the a simple #muslimban. No matter the age, we are someone’s child. If you believe we are all of any creation’s children, then why do think you have the right to chastise anyone.
A war in a distant land seems of no attention, but if your child was between oceans of torture and insults, would you not raise a hand to protect them from drowning. Tell me how you put the human in humane, if you cannot be a person to help those who have the misfortune of calling themselves refugees. Tell me how any ban, any order, or any gesture to strip away their rights to live makes you a person at all. Tell me how you justify the hypocrisy that you embody. These people are stuck between a home that is raping them of everything and a world who see their trodden bodies capable of defiling others. Tell me you do not see the desperation of those people who still choose to be spat at than stay at home.
Tell me your fight for children is unconditional.
A Kenyan born Somali poet, Warsan Shire, says it best:
You have to understand,
That no one puts their children in a boat
Unless the water is safer than the land
No one burns their palms
Under trains
Beneath carriages
No one spends days and nights in the stomach of a truck
Feeding on newspaper unless the miles traveled
Means something more than journey.
No one crawls under fences
No one wants to be beaten
Pitied
No one chooses refugee camps
Or strip searches where your
Body is left aching
Or prison,
Because prison is safer
Than a city of fire
And one prison guard
In the night
Is better than a truckload
Of men who look like your father
No one could take it
No one could stomach it
No one skin would be tough enough
