always running
June 30, 2003
running...running...from-to...always
this morning read some thoughts penned by rafi mustafa: On Bonds of Nightmare
an excerpt follows:
After all these years, the memory of my mother running for her life along a dirt road still haunts me in my nightmares. I was only six years old and could only run so fast. We were running for our life to cross the border from India into Pakistan. I was told that Pakistan was our new country….As I am turning sixty, that dirt road is still a part of my life. am still running desperately to get hold of my mother. In my nightmares I am always six years old. ...At times I see an Israeli settler running for cover with his child under his arm. Are his nightmares any different from mine or from those of a Palestinian mother carrying the lifeless body of her baby and crying with despair? I see images of a mother in strife-torn Africa carrying her child whose life is coming to end due to starvation. I once met a holocaust survivor, the grandmother of someone I knew. I wanted to ask her about her nightmares. Then I remember the face of an Iraqi woman running on a deserted street in Baghdad during a bombing run. Her mouth is wide open and her eyes are bulging with terror. Does she have the same nightmares as that little Vietnamese
girl with napalm burns, running naked on a street in Saigon, crying for help?
At times I feel that all these people are related to me. We share a common bond - the bond of nightmares
***
...as i was reading about it i thought life is a perpetual run...running towards something...running away from something...we do this till we catch up with death...or death is doing the running all this while and when it catches up with us...the game ends and restarts...sometimes our running is blended and fired by enthusiasm and eagerness...sometimes with despair...monotony...zest...disillusionment...but whatever a given emotion...we run...we run…till we stop or are stopped...nightmares of rafi Mustafa is one aspect of it...
running...running...from-to...always
this morning read some thoughts penned by rafi mustafa: On Bonds of Nightmare
an excerpt follows:
After all these years, the memory of my mother running for her life along a dirt road still haunts me in my nightmares. I was only six years old and could only run so fast. We were running for our life to cross the border from India into Pakistan. I was told that Pakistan was our new country….As I am turning sixty, that dirt road is still a part of my life. am still running desperately to get hold of my mother. In my nightmares I am always six years old. ...At times I see an Israeli settler running for cover with his child under his arm. Are his nightmares any different from mine or from those of a Palestinian mother carrying the lifeless body of her baby and crying with despair? I see images of a mother in strife-torn Africa carrying her child whose life is coming to end due to starvation. I once met a holocaust survivor, the grandmother of someone I knew. I wanted to ask her about her nightmares. Then I remember the face of an Iraqi woman running on a deserted street in Baghdad during a bombing run. Her mouth is wide open and her eyes are bulging with terror. Does she have the same nightmares as that little Vietnamese
girl with napalm burns, running naked on a street in Saigon, crying for help?
At times I feel that all these people are related to me. We share a common bond - the bond of nightmares
***
...as i was reading about it i thought life is a perpetual run...running towards something...running away from something...we do this till we catch up with death...or death is doing the running all this while and when it catches up with us...the game ends and restarts...sometimes our running is blended and fired by enthusiasm and eagerness...sometimes with despair...monotony...zest...disillusionment...but whatever a given emotion...we run...we run…till we stop or are stopped...nightmares of rafi Mustafa is one aspect of it...
posted by temporal at 8/28/2005
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