October is Respect Life Month

In today’s Gospel, Jesus speaks to us: “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Mt 22:37-39)

Last October Ms. Bhana Atassi spoke to us about the impact of the fighting on the people in her native Syria and we prayed for peace. One year later, nothing has really changed in Syria and fighting has escalated across much of the Middle East.

Bhana’s daughter, Dania Noghnogh, had a high school assignment to identify the four faces she would put on her Mt. Rushmore Syria, Kareem, Bassel, Hope Her reflection is a powerful personal essay on the futility and suffering of war. Dania reveals her own passion and pain as the fighting touches her friends in Syria. She clearly reflects the reality of the real victims of the A Syrian girl at the battle, “no matter which side they are on”. Dania reveals the most powerful Domiz refugee camp ally that sustains them in these suffering times.

The Revolution Waged In Me by Dania Noghnogh Home is where your family is, where the street you grew on is, where you learned how to walk, run, swim, and dream. For many of the mix-cultured, second generation mutts like me, we see home in the fifty stars and thirteen stripes. Home is in the four faces that stand tall on Mount Rushmore, the men that represent this country. However, my Mount Rushmore is different because, for me, this is not home.

SYRIA At the head of my personal Mount Rushmore stands Syria, her face shining as bright as the Sahara sun I saw every morning. My time with Syria -- my greatest friend -- was sugar-coated with innocence like the sweet almonds I would share with my cousins. Being with her, feeling her vibrant energy, was what it felt like to be home for me. The man on the side of the street calling out "Khamsin Lyrat" while selling tea to his daily visitors. The woman who happened to bump into her sister's husband's great aunt and recognize her within seconds. The children chasing the cats down the alley after they pick fresh jasmines from their next door neighbor's garden. That was home. Where I felt safe in the arms of a country filled to the brim with people who care. People who had culture and tradition pumping through their blood, passing each from generation to generation. Syria was home to all of them and raised them as her children, teaching them how to be a family.

But soon after the Arab Spring that began the winter of my freshman year, I saw her flash across television screens. I watched as my people began calling for their turn to rise, their turn to burn down the past and rise from the ashes. Passive protesters shot to the ground, heroes dragged through the streets, families tom apart, dreams crushed; all happening as nightmares turned into reality and reality turned into a nightmare. Every night, I would pray for my family, pray for my friends, pray for all those who were broken by this hell. I would pray for Syria.

Syria's soul was bruised black and blue, her scraps dripping with integrity and strength. I saw her get up every time she had been stricken down. She marched down the streets of the once lively cities, just as the peaceful protesters that have passed on have done before her. With the revolutionary flag draped over her shoulders, bandaging her wounds, she continues to march to the beat of the chanting civilians. "Eshah Yoored Eskatem Nitham," The People Want to Topple the Regime, echoes through her mountains and rivers and valleys. Continued on the other side KAREEM Continued from the other side She marched just as my good friend Kareem once did. The young, strapping seventeen-year-old boy stands next to her on Mount Rushmore because, just like her, he had fought. But unlike her, Kareem had his dreams cut short, his breath stolen out of his lungs, his heart poisoned by the hatred of this world.

After picking up the phone that summer morning, my mind flashed to the summer we met as children. We grew up in a land of fun and games. A land where we were shielded from the harsh cruelty that stood among us on our home country's soil. Without him, I would see the world in the solemn colors of black and white while sitting idly by as the world's atrocity painted it red. I would not know how to love so strongly it hurt. I would not know how to give everything and still give more.

And now that light from his eyes is gone. He was shot to the ground while protesting on the streets. Because of his keen hearing of the call for freedom, he lay in blood as his friends and family looked on in tears. He took his final breath and passed away his senior year. He lost his life for striving to change the problems the world set before him. This same callous world that took him from us was the same one he was so distressed to save. He was a dreamer. He was a trooper. He was a fighter. He was a hero. And he lost his life for a cause that will never go in vain.

Kareem’s death pushed me to follow the revolution more diligently than ever. I followed every news report, attended every protest, spoke at every fundraiser. I would pray for all those who were martyrs, who died in the name of freedom. And to all those who were the opposition, the pro-regime, in my eyes, they were painted as the enemy. I felt disgusted by every militia leader who shot down protesters, by every person that passionately supported the regime.

BASSEL But then, the phone rang again, and my prayers went into cardiac arrest. Coach Bassel, the man who had practically raised me had been shot twice in the shoulder while getting out of his car. Although we were sure that he was going to survive, just as fast as the bullet was shot he was gone. I couldn't stop crying the day I heard he had passed after three days of hospitalization. This was the same man with the deep, scratchy voice that asked my name and showed me to my first class. He took the shy, American girl under his wing and year after year continued to watch her grow into a loud, outspoken young lady.

A week after his death, bitter words began poisoning the tongues of those who once mourned him. Finally, the reason for his death was revealed: He had been killed by the Free Syria Army for being a pro-regime spy who had reported pro-revolutionary activity. People around me began to refuse to mourn his death. Those who had prayed with me at the death of Kareem were now refusing to kneel into sujud.

But to me, a death was a death. Bassel still belonged on my personal Mount Rushmore next to Kareem because in my eyes, there was no longer mukhabarat (secret police), a Free Syria Army, or protesters. No longer Alswite or Sunni, pro or anti. In their place, there was death. Death of the innocent and the not so innocent. Death of living, breathing, feeling human beings that could not be used as a score to who is winning the revolution. Each tear that fell in the name of Bassel began to fall in the name of all the souls that had been lost in the revolution. Because after two cold, long years, this fight was no longer about winning. It was about survival as it took its impact on the everyday lives of people. While on the other side of the world, we only heard about the cities being bombed and the soldiers fighting, we never heard about the child who becomes used to seeing his friends die or the mother that doesn't fret about only feeding each of her children a fourth of a potato each day.

HOPE The people that once used to hold my love for Syria now held the normalization of death, pain, and misery in one hand. But in the other hand, they held Hope, the last person standing tall on my Mount Rushmore. Hope that is so madly in love with Syria that he has a hard time keeping away, even in the direst of times. Hope that keeps pushing everyone to keep fighting for freedom, something I once mistook as winning. But soon I began to see that for all those who had been oppressed to the point of revolt, freedom meant survival; they weren't fighting to win a war, they were fighting to live. And Hope is the one who keeps pushing them forward. These people were the real dreamers, the real troopers, the real fighters, the real heroes. These people were those who worry about how they will feed their kids with the food shortage or if their brothers will come back from fighting alive. These people aren't pro-regime or anti-regime. These people are those who are suffering, who are broken, but still smile once in a while. Because no matter what side they are on, they believe that one day, they will look out their windows and see the bright Sahara sun. That one day they will see Syria, hand-in-hand with Hope, rise again.