Stories To Remember In An Unkind World, 6/7/2012
There are some stories one can't bear to hear, for to hear them is to lose a slice of our solidarity with all humanity, and to feel a sense of utter cosmic loneliness. Last week, the world seemed to have gone mad entirely. Along with stories about cannibalism and severed body parts, horrors not from some faraway place but right here in North America, there was the chilling video testimony of 11 year old Ali el-Sayed , a survivor of the Houlah killing spree carried out evidently by Syrian President Bashar Assad's shadow militia. The gunmen killed his mother, father, and eldest brother. Ali witnessed the slaying of his younger siblings--brothers' Aden and Nasser, 6 and 8 years old, and his sister, Rasha. "I put my brothers blood all over me and acted like I was dead," said the boy. According to Reuters, "Among the dead were infants and toddlers with bullet and knife wounds to the head." I read this crisp, clean, unemotional, neutral exemplar of preci...