HUMANITY CRUCIFIED

The shadows of evening were lengthening as the three of them stopped for a short rest. The girl sat down, her feet bleeding, the child now lying in her arms had long ago given up his futile efforts to wail. The mountains around looked silently and seemly; as he turned to take the last look, a couple of tears ran down his wrinkled old cheeks and good that they did, for this was the face that had never known the sting of tears.
    I am not talking about another old sentimental man, but this was a great man, a man who had been taught to fight for his freedom as a child, who had offered his sons to the altar of freedom and as an old man, carried their shattered dead bodies to their graves and what burden of dead child on the shoulders of a father. Only the bravest of brave man can be worthy of such a burden.
    The sun was almost setting and they were at least three miles from the border. The old man motioned her to move on despite all the hardships on their way. So they finally entered a new land, a tired old man,a young girl, a mere existence, mechanically going through the emotions of living and an almost dead child with a disputed future...
    The boy clung to the railing of the boat, his knuckles turning white due to exerting extensive strength, the raw wood biting his tiny hands, bodies pressing all around him, and murky water beneath, water that had swallowed his mother a few moments ago. The baby had still been in her arms when the two had pushed over the same boat, yet he could still hear the baby crying. Someone stepped over his bare foot and then cursed him, but he was unaware of the or the sound. The only sensation that was left with him was that of fear, a fear rising to the dimensions he had never encountered.
    Had it been only yesterday when his mother had risen him from his bed. She was happy then, he could see it in her eyes. But today was quite a different day, he could not even feel the warmth of her mother's hands.

humanity crucified

    It was four long weeks span before the boat reached the destination. Four weeks of hardships and starvation in which a child of eight merely lost his childhood, learned of struggle for survival, learned of starvation. So an angry, confused and hungry child stepped on the shore, his chances of seeing Vietnam, his homeland almost became extinct...
    The long queue moved slowly as the men boarded the ship mere teenagers really; they didn't look like an army that had been defeated. You could see a zeal and a faith that lit up their faces, so if they were giving up one front, this was not the end of world, they would keep on fighting until the day they would reach the promised land. Their struggle for freedom would not go unrewarded.
    There were no good byes, just a constant clatter of machine guns, as flares lit up the skies, men looked on and men died after the ships had set sail, and then the silence and the stink of death. The sink that has eroded the dignity of human race.
    The old man who crossed over the Afghan border with his daughter and grandson, the young boy who escaped from Vietnam and the leaky junk, the men expelled from Lebanon. All these are not isolated cases this is the of millions of people ousted from their homelands and sentenced to a life of unrest for the crime of believing - believing in the freedom of mankind.
    The thatched straw huts in Thailand, tottered tents extending from Torkham to Bosnia, rows upon rows of tin Shanties in the Jordan valley, Lebanon, Syria and Kashmir- I find these the most disgusting monuments of human history.