Letter to the editor: Every day I turn on the water to wash dishes, to wash clothes, to wash my hair, to clean the floor. Ah, that precious water. Pure water, clean water that I can drink from the tap any time I need it or want it. I think of a little boy with the cup, following the water sprite through Gaza, drinking drops from the tap that would otherwise be lost in the dry soil. And I wonder why the oppressors treat him like an enemy. That thirsty little boy… I wonder if he has relatives who survived the relentless bombings, shootings, famine, torture and drone attacks. I wonder when he will be safe, or if he is still alive.
See, we don’t know because hundreds of reporters have been shot. It’s a crime that money from my country is funding the killing. I turn off the tap and my mind wanders to other things. Things like: How can people allow their children to rape other people and call it a just war? How can mothers bear to see their sons and daughters pick up a gun, aim down a scope and kill children or mothers or men or old men and women? I believe that killing dulls the heart and clouds the mind with horrific images. This is the stuff nightmares are made of. Walking through a massacre and breathing in the stench of rotting bodies, a death they caused. I wonder how I can bear this pain in my head, my heart and my body. The unbearable tension of a longing beyond what I think I can bear, for the killing to stop and the healing to begin. I want to liberate Palestine. I want to free America. I want to free us all from this terrible cruelty. It must stop. Save us all from these dark deeds.
Robyn Flatley
Brattleboro, August 22
