I really wasn’t planning on posting anything until finals finish next Tuesday and once the inter-sem holidays officially kick in. I’m struggling to concentrate on studying as it is, since a long interval between papers can usually detract the mind when it’s lost its momentum, especially during a time as significant as this. It isn’t any help that Professional Practice and Criminal Procedure are my worst subjects this semester.
But there are some matters which need to be shared immediately, if only to serve as reminders for us to never take anything for granted. I know we complain a lot about this beloved country of ours, but consider the fact we can go to class or work everyday without the fear of an explosion ripping through our streets, or that we can sleep soundly at night knowing that rebels will not come breaking down our doors, toting guns in our faces.
Consider these facts and be thankful that despite all the problems this country faces, we still have that one most pivotal thing that make us the envy of war-ravaged countries and conflict zones, and that is peace.
The situation in Baghdad today is near hopeless; bombs go off on a daily basis and people are living on pure luck to survive each day. A writer in Iraq talks about Baghdadophobia, and how a mundane task like going to work can be extremely stressful. A mother in DR Congo, currently facing a grave humanitarian crisis, shares her experience of having to flee with her family and the constant danger and threat they’re living under. Both rebels and members of the army cannot be trusted - rape can happen at any moment.
These stories sound so far-fetched, so violent, so alien to us. All we know and see and hear are from papers and the TV. We don’t witness or experience it firsthand, and Alhamdulillah for that. God forbid the day Malaysia loses her peace and security to chaos, anarchy and mayhem.
This isn’t meant to be some kind of preachy sermon. It’s just a little reminder to remember the blessings we have, to count them always and to be grateful for them because most of the time, we don’t know what we’ve got until it’s gone.
I have tried imagining what it’d be like to undergo that kind of terror every single waking moment. I’ve tried to envision myself in a situation where a bomb would suddenly go off, or tried to picture coming home to a house that wasn’t there anymore, and it scares the living daylights out of me. And that’s just visualising it.
If you have some extra time to kill, try and spend some of it reading Baghdad Burning, a blog by an Iraqi woman identified only as riverbend. Her last entry was a year ago, and I can only pray that she’s safe whereever she is now since there has not been any contact since then. Her posts manage to vividly depict the fear, the hopelessness and the uncertainty the Iraqis went through back then, and are still going through now. Even if we can’t relate, at least we allow ourselves to feel for them. Nowadays deaths in Iraq are so common that we’ve grown to accept them as normal.
I don’t exactly know where I’m going with this. It’s 5am, I can’t sleep and my CPC is just lying there, staring back at me. I’ve been surfing the news and I suppose after reading so many articles on the current realities of our time, it’s just one of those moments when something seizes you to share with as many people as you can what you know. Sometimes we just need to take a good look at ourselves and rearrange our priorities.
I’m starting to sound incomprehensible…lethargy has finally caught up.
I don’t think I’ll remember typing this later on, but for what it’s worth, I hope you take whatever good you can squeeze from it.
I’m sure I made sense somewhere…
Enough said here.
