Christmas and New Year 2008

Christmas and New Year 2008

A laugh is echoing on the wind. Two children, a boy and a girl, are running through the streets of their town, somewhere on the Gaza strip. It is Christmas day; a day of love and joy. Their dog is running enthusiastically after them, jumping around them while barking loudly. People on their way to where ever they are going, turn their heads around to see these children, having fun and laughing aloud. They are just playing with their friend the dog. That is really all these children want at that moment in their life. They want to have fun, laugh and be happy. But unfortunately this will soon change for them. They will experience the grown up adult world faster than they want. The two children stop running in the middle of a street and try to get back their breath. They bend over and pet their friend the dog. The dog is waving wild with his tail while he licks their hands not knowing which hand to pick. Suddenly a sound like fireworks overtakes the sound of their laughter. The children and the dog are surprised, looking around to where the sound is coming from. A group of soldiers are hiding at one end of the street while another group of soldiers are hiding at the other end of the street. Both groups are hiding behind cars and other objects and are aiming and firing their weapons at the other group of soldiers. Hundreds of bullets are flying through the street. The girl tries to scream out loud but a bullet rip’s away her jaw and she falls to the ground. Her body is shaking from the pain as she hits the ground. The boy bends over, trying to break her fall but he gets also hit by bullets in his back. The girl is already dead but he doesn’t realise that. The boy falls on top of the dead girl and their dog. His eyes look around for help while his voice is crying out of pain and fear. His hands are holding the dog under him so it won’t get hit by the bullets that are still flying through the street. But there is no help for him. And slowly the cry for help from the boy turns into silence. The last thought of the boy is about Christmas. His stiff hands are still holding the dog, hands that turned into white skin and dead flesh.

The sound of bullets is fading away. Afraid for getting shot and killed the two groups of soldiers pulled out of the street. All what is left is the sound of their footsteps fading away. The only sound is the whining of the dog that tries to wake up the boy and girl. He starts licking their hands but their skin does not taste the same anymore. Their hands and the street are covered with their blood. The dog looks at the bodies of the children but he doesn’t understand why they don’t react. After a while the silence is interrupted by the sound of an approaching siren. An ambulance drives into the street and stops by the children’s bodies. The driver and his co-driver load the bodies of the children into the ambulance and quickly jump behind the steering wheel of the ambulance and drive off. The dog starts to run after the ambulance, following his friends that are lying inside.

That same Christmas evening the rest of the world is watching the news. Israeli and Palestine soldiers that are interviewed by the world press are telling how dangerous it is on the Gaza strip, that they have to fight to protect their people. They both kill the other to protect their own kind. We, the rest of the world, sit safe at home and watch the news on our TV. How tanks are driving fast through the Gaza strip while shooting their bombs. How airplanes drop their bombs on houses. The Israeli and Palestine politicians are also all over the news world wide. Making their “important” statements on TV, using their big important words to tell to the rest of the world how bad their enemies are and that it is all justified to kill their enemies. Priests from both sides scream out to their followers that they must attack the followers of that other religion and kill them. That they will go to heaven when they do what the priest tells them to do.

Of course the girl and boy in this short story are just an imagination of my mind. But for me they represent the children that died on the Gaza Strip in the last days, all of them. These last days I got tired of it and stopped watching the news. Through the years I get every time a stronger feeling that all those so called important people just start to fight with the other so they get to be in the world news, so they get to be important again. They don’t really want to talk with each other and solve their problems at all. I think they just want to seem important to the rest of the world. And every year those so called “important people” get what they wish for, war and death for the innocent and being important for them. And we, the rest of the world, are watching it year in and year out and get tired of it. And after a while the fighting stops. These same “important” people will tell the world on the news how good they are that they stopped the killing. And maybe some of them will get even a noble prize for peace because they stopped the killing that they start in the first place. The losers of my little story are the dead children and the dog. They didn’t start a fight and just wanted to laugh and be happy and play and don’t understand why they had to die for those “important people”. Maybe the dead children are the ones that should get a noble prize for peace. After all, they are the ones that paid the price for that peace. Well, peace until next Christmas probably.

Happy New Year world.