Greece & Gaza

01-06-2024

This morning I’m catching a flight to the mainland of Greece - Rhodes to Athens. Long story short, I had to get up at 4:45am (after going to bed at midnight!) and still somehow I had three minutes to get to the bus which was six minutes away (needless to say I ran quite fast!!) 

I was up so late last night talking to a friend I made at the hostel. We day tripped to the island of Symi together. His broken English (learned exclusively from watching American TV and films) was complimented with our limited French. We ended the day back on the beach in Rhodes. As I walked down the beach, Momin, my friend from Gaza, spoke on the phone to his parents. 

He left Gaza, seeking asylum in Belgium, five years ago. Here he has set up a business over the past four years. His family and friends thought he was quite mad to leave, but now wish the world they could be elsewhere with him. He himself owned two flats in Gaza, the family another, now all destroyed by the bombings to his town. His mother told him over the phone how they still have no food to eat and other atrocities happening to the innocent peoples stuck there. His twin brother had a very successful business there, now it’s completely gone. But they don’t wish any of it back. He said: 'No one wants compensation, no one wants the money, we just want the war to finish...'

We talked for a few hours about religion, politics and the like. How important it is to dialogue with others with different views and ways of life. He shared of his Muslim faith, and how it wavered when he saw what was happening to his family. How does a God, good or not, let things like this go on? Questions all who have heard of a god have asked at one point. 

Like a faithful servant, he went back to study the Quran for answers… 

While he spoke, I prayed 'Lord, am I here, in this conversion, to speak to this man? What am I to say?'

'No Callan, you are here to listen.'

Momin expressed that he was a ‘family man’, didn’t have many friends. Making the distance between him and his family all the more painful. 

Riddle me this; How do you go and buy food on the beach in Greece after hearing of humans in the wrong place at the wrong time who go without day after day? 

May we strive to appreciate and use our privilege to better the lives of others. 

Peace to those hurting and peace to you today too.

Related Word Art: Sleep

Every human is like all other humans, some other humans, and no other human.

Clyde Kluckhon