Some have War, Some have Cookies

There are so many parallel worlds in our little world. How do you switch from one to another? You can take a plane and make the switch in a matter of hours, just like that, but the real distance travelled doesn't leave you as easily. It stays with you for a long time, at times making you numb, at times absorbing the past into the here-and-now, the distance into the immediate, making time and space more relative than you thought possible, confusing your sense of reality. At times leaving you in a bubble it's hard to get out of, it is more likely than not you ask yourself where am I really? And there's no clear-cut answer.

You have to work hard in order for it not to distance you from yourself.
No matter where you go, there you are.
- But not always so.

My stay in Barcelona is slowly coming to an end, and even though Barcelona truly is a wonderful city I am more than happy about the fact that I'm leaving tomorrow. Home!
Home is a place where you're free from the exhausting need to explore everything around. Where you're left only with the task of coming to terms with the distances that have settled in your heart, a condition that, like every experience that makes you grow, is both rewarding and painful.

How can I wander around in Barcelona and enjoy life when I know that my friends are being bombed? When I know that people get killed and suffer on a large scale while the UN Security Council decides to postpone the meeting aimed to produce some kind of solution to the horror going on? (Great idea, postpone it, that will make it all alot more easier. Fucking super power ego trips.) How do I cope with the ignorance all around? How do you come to terms with the fact that you are in this beautiful sorrow free world in the world while there's another one existing parallel to it that is filled with death, fear and horror? How can you just close your eyes and be happy?

You can't.
And you shouldn't.

But you can't just sit there and cry either. (What good would that do?)

A memory from Rashedie comes to mind.
It was March 20, 2003, Amira's birthday and the day that the US decided to invade Iraq. Gro and me found ourselves in Amira's kitchen, making cinnamon rolls in honour of the birthday princess. The war was on everybody's lips and on everybody's minds, allah o-akhbar filled the streets, grandmothers cried, and the sense of fear was omnipresent. Still, we were laughing while the smell of almost-done cinnamon rolls from the small oven filled our hearts, and the war was as yet far away. "Some have war and some have cookies," Amira said, in a loving tone of voice that couldn't do anything but make you smile. Her insight was unmistakable: there is suffering and there is happiness. Coming from someone who has witnessed more horror than I will ever be able to grasp, her statement was all the more revealing. You just have to acknowledge it; the world is not fair. Eat your cookies when you can, preserve the good times in your heart, store it there, let love in whenever you encounter it, and then take it out and use it to fight when you have to. There is a time for everything, and it doesn't help Rashedie that I sit in Barcelona and cry.

Still, I do.
I can't help it.