Troubled times
Remembering time spent living amongst the peoples of Palestine.
Reflecting on Sylvia Keesmaat’s “Prayers for peace in the midst of the Israel-Hamas War” (CC online, Oct. 23), I recall a line from another of Bruce Cockburn’s songs, “Justice”: “Everybody loves to see justice done on somebody else.” These are troubled times. I struggle with memories of when I lived among the peoples of Palestine: the synagogues and mosques of Jerusalem, the kibuttzim of the settlers, the refugee camps in the West Bank, the streets and shops of Gaza. I am not alone in anguish. A local baker posted these words on her Instagram page last week: “I am just looking for truth, for kindness and for a solution to help humanity, to help stop the violence, to help stop the insanity of war . . . And I do not know how! As a baker, when I hear that bakeries cannot bake due to war I am overwhelmed. That hospitals cannot care for patients because there is nothing to care with . . . this is beyond humanity . . . this is insanity!”
I’ve walked the streets of Gaza and dined on UNRWA rice in refugee camps.
CC archives.
CC archives.
CC archives.
CC archives.
After that, I was able to put my thoughts and feelings on paper. With thanks to Meg Roberts of Rustica Woodfired Bakery for helping me find the words.
A Baker’s Prayer for Peace
Give us this day our daily bread, we pray.
And without further thought we move on with our day
for here we have food, and shelter too.
What else is there for me to do?
But if bakeries cannot bake, there is no bread.
How then shall the hungry in Gaza be fed?
For there is no water, no shelter, no power,
no desperate delivery of UNRWA flour.
Not bread alone do the people there need.
War rages on and from what I can read
hospitals cannot care for the dying;
dreadful must be their pain and crying.
Peace on earth, good will toward all.
What more can I add to my heart-broken call?
Cease now all the firing, stop this insanity!
That is my prayer for all of humanity.
My wanderings throughout Europe and the half year I spent in Palestine in early 1980 were a significant part of my sojourn. I’ve walked the streets of Gaza and dined on UNRWA rice in refugee camps. I was sheltered in the Nablus refugee camp when the mayor, Bassam Shakaa, lost both legs in an assassination attempt. The family of my friend Imad adopted me so that his mother and sisters could have their heads uncovered when I stayed with them; they knew me by my Arabic name, Boutros.
Life in the concrete boxes of the camps, with no furniture, open sewers, was challenging, but the people were among the most loving, caring I have ever encountered. It is, in part, what makes the current conflict so intensely real for me, and difficult to share with others. But the baker’s anguish gave me the courage to try.
