لدي المرض السوري

This is a post I put on my fb group today:

'I am having a bad case of Syria diarrhoea - it's a mental condition characterised by wanting to get stuff out of my system - so I apologise in advance

1/2 Photos

The little headless girl in her red dress, lying on the ground outdoors like a star fish, way back

The headless teacher, seen 2015

The woman with eyes showing and white dust all over her, 2016?

The couple standing with their child, 2016?

The thin baby with napalm on his back, I thought this would be the picture which turned the war, but no, 2016

The man with his dying wife in a wheelchair in the street, Aleppo, 2016

The cats eating corpses in the street, 2016

Oh the boy sitting on the floor, leaning his head against the wall in the hospital, Aleppo 2016

The boy sitting on the pavement his head in his hands, his siblings wrapped on the ground in front of him, Aleppo 2016

The woman with children sleeping on a street in Lebanon, the older son half in a cardboard box

The 2 feet photo - Douma - Firas Abdullah, 2016, he held them up with the left one on the left and the right one on the right, like shoes before school in the morning ☹

I really wanted to put that one at the big front photo on this group, but it's seriously gruesome, yet calm, undeniable

--

And why are these the images I think of, not the torture corpses? And what about all the others I recognise on Twitter? These ones are all too tame, too beautiful and well-composed. Just mentioning a few is massively disrespectful to all the others.

But I want to talk about it, not just have them stuffed into my head. Anyway, I am venting here because this is my group and if people don't like it they can leave. I have been all organised and controlled about the group for a long time and need a break.

I don't think it is helpful for me to avoid mentioning Syria for fear of upsetting people. I don't think there is a right way of doing it either.'

أمشي في ريف أكسفورد

أمشي وأنظر إلى العشب في هذا الحقل و إلى قمر النصف.

I am walking out on the country track parallel to the footpath. I am looking for something nameless. Of course I find nothing that looks like that. I see beer cans in the ditches and perfect tiny white flowers on the tall bushes. The moon is utterly lovely up there, half sky and half moon, the division between the two is all blurry.

Je marche le long d'une petite route tout près de chez nous. Il y a des arbres partout et les oiseaux chantent. La lune blanche reste immobile dans le ciel. 

Warum ausgehen? Für meine Seele, um die Ruhe zu finden. Ich möchte auch meinen Chips essen!