Words that Never Leave You: “What can we do? This is the life here.”
Part Thirty-Nine in an ongoing series from Hollie's book "Words That Never Leave You: Fifty Pearls of Wisdom and Reflection from Survivors Across the World."
One warm morning in Syria, I waited and waited in the unkept garden for my dear friend Mazloum to collect me for the day’s work. Finally, he showed up, an unusual sadness glinting in his large hazel eyes.
Mazloum’s tiny nephew, Hamode — after only a few years on earth — was killed in a freak accident when a gas canister exploded as his mother made tea. The mother and her baby girl, Maryam, who she was cradling when the eruption happened, were rushed to the hospital. Maryam's eyesight was gone, the baby girl blinded just a few months into her time on earth. I broke down when he told me the news.
“What can we do?” Mazloum asked, comforting me. “This is the life here.”
In parts of the planet where death seems to move in fast, there is acceptance we do not have in nations not at war and not under the threat of famine and starvation. Instead, death is a persistent accomplice, a feared but not feared concept, an often-pained acknowledgment that God has a greater plan.
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** Short read of meaningful lessons gleaned from the ordinary forced to become extraordinary
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