Life As We Know It … November 2015

” Be soft,
Do not let the world make you hard.
Do not let the pain make you hate.
Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness.
Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree,
You still believe it to be a beautiful place.”
                                                                                                                      *                          – Iain Thomas

My good friend Natacha shared those words this week, in a moment where emotions, tensions and passionate reactions may lead us to see our world in a negative light. Words that reminded me of everything we have learnt on this journey we have taken, that most people on our planet are inherently good and that despite all the pain, we can still have hope.

Sometimes I wonder what the role of a food and travel blog is? Are we merely there to entertain? To inspire ideas in the kitchen and let people dream of far flung places? Are we not supposed to deal with “heavy” and “serious” issues like history, politics, society and religion? But we cannot talk about food and travel without dealing with the history and politics that come with it. We cannot travel without being interested in the culture and religion of the societies we engage with. We cannot eat food on the road without being interested in the people who cook it.

When we woke up on Saturday morning here, the Paris attacks were still happening and as we read about it, I started crying. Not because I did not care about Beirut, not because I did not care about Garissa, not because I am immune to how many civilians are being killed in air strikes on Syria. I don’t know why I cried. I thought about all the people I knew in Paris, about the streets I used to walk down, trying to understand what was going on.

Since the weekend, discussions have been heated on the value of human life, the ignorance of others, the “appropriate” levels of mourning. It is not true that the West only reacts to white people being blown up, that media only covers western people dying. I remember thinking the same thing when 9/11 happened, “what about all the starving children dying every single day?” Do we need a tragedy in the West to remind us and wake us up to all the tragedy happening elsewhere? Paris did not only lose white people. I think the sad truth is that we have been desensitised to violence happening in certain places. It is sad because we are used to tragedy touching those places, we are used to reading about casualties in Syria, in Iraq, in Lebanon. We are used to feeling safe in European capitals, to feeling the streets are relatively peaceful, yet violence has been brewing daily without guns, through our actions, through our ignorance. It is not at all that the lives in Beirut or Baghdad or Gaza are not valued, it is that a high percentage of our family and friends do not live there. That we have read about bombings and killings there for too long, a situation that has to end and that unfortunately we have begun to see as “normal”. This, is the sad truth.

And what do we mean when we say “we” or “our”, are we referring to people we believe to be similar to us, who think the same? The group of people we think we belong to? Are people in Baghdad and Beirut, not part of our “we”? Is our “we” homogenous? And should it be?

What is happening to our world that Facebook needs a “safe” button? Hurricanes, earthquakes, terrorist attacks. There has always been tragedy in our world, it is not something new, but perhaps in this digital age we are simply more connected and aware of what is happening around us and news, even from far away is instant. We are able to follow live action minute by minute.

What news is worthy of live action reporting? What events do our mainstream media have access to? Or should we say what do people want to read about? (There are interesting things to be said about the way global media and readership works, but that is a whole other discussion) There are three recent incidents where I can remember following the live action closely over the last months and years. Places which we are attached to, places we were lucky enough not to be in at the time, but where we had many friends and family. Places we know well, have lived in or been to.

The first one was the Westgate Mall in Nairobi, then Charlie Hebdo in Paris and now, Bataclan in Paris yet again. I remember the London bombings of 2005. It was ten years ago, when I saw one of my closest friends on the news, emerging from a tube station on the shoulders of two other men. I was living in London at the time, but had gone home to Italy for the summer. From my kitchen in Tuscany, I watched BBC at a distance and there he was with blood on his face, but I could recognise the fight poverty bracelet we were both wearing after the Bono concert in Trafalgar Square that year. My other flatmate was supposed to be with him that morning too, but luckily had decided to stay home. In that moment I was thinking where is he, where is he, why aren’t they together? And a sense of dread creeped into my whole body. All the phone lines were down and there was no Facebook “safe” button.

They survived 7.7.2005. London, my home at the time. I was lucky enough to be away.

13.11.2015. Paris my home for two years, I am now lucky enough to be away.

We never know what is going to happen, you may think you can avoid the big tourist attractions, the big religious sites, the obvious targets, but you can just as easily be shot eating at the Petit Cambodge restaurant in Rue Alibert, a neighbourhood I know well. Statistically you have a higher chance of being in a car crash than a terrorist attack, but it is the fear and purposeful violence that comes with it that scares. That creates terror.

Now, just a few weeks away from giving birth to our baby son, I wonder what world we are bringing him into, was our world always filled with such hatred and fear or are we just more aware? Our generation and the generation before us were lucky enough to not go through the World Wars, to have grown up in a world where certain regional wars were more easily isolated from our daily lives. There have always been wars, I can count at least 5 big ones off the top of my head since the end of the Second World War, but now there seem to be no rules to the game.

What have we learnt from our constant warring? From our constant negotiations for power? What have we learnt from creating destruction, poverty, pain and violence? All the hypocrisy and lies of our governments and the mega-companies that control them.

Susan Sontag said, “I don’t care about someone being intelligent; any situation between people, when they are really human with each other, produces “intelligence.”

Maybe it is time we get “really human” with everyone around us.

We have said this so many times since we left home, but this journey has shown us how most people have a kind heart and a loving soul. It does not matter what history is behind you, what social status your were born into, what religion you grew up with, most of us want the same things and treasure the same things. We cannot look at what is happening in our world without looking into how we behave ourselves, how we treat others within our own society, how we raise our children, how our lifestyle which we seem to hold so dear in the West perpetuates our dependency on oil and fossil fuels. The same oil that funds an extremist movement like ISIS. How our own western governments lobby hard to sell weapons and bombs to Egypt, Saudi Arabia and beyond.

What does it say about our western societies when youth born and raised in our own countries are willing to commit such atrocities? How bad does it have to be to push people to desperation, to push young people to the edge of feeling like they have nothing to lose, that they have no hope and that they rather their lasting act on earth, be an act of pure violence and hate? We cannot solve our problems with more bombs and more violence, if we do not look at the root of the cause and are not prepared to change.

As my son grows up, I hope I can teach him the good in people. That we CANNOT continue discriminating and judging based on someone’s appearance or religion or social status. That this vicious cycle needs to end. More hatred will not lead to love, will not lead to peace, will not lead to victory for humankind. More violence will not lead to unity, will not lead to harmony, will not lead to happiness. And while we talk about the violence and hatred of terror attacks in our streets and neighbourhoods, let us not forget the daily violence and hatred that is practiced in our streets and neighbourhoods. The kind of violence, that happens without a gun, but with words and gestures. The kind that is thrown at everyday muslims or people that merely seem different from how we perceive ourselves. The acts of everyday violence and hatred that only perpetuate the separations within our communities, that erode any possibility of a sense of belonging; that build walls, not bridges.

I want my son to be proud of the world that he is born into, to see that we are a species worth saving, that our communities are rich with differences, but also respect and appreciation for each other. Where does the line between one community end and start anyway?

Change and healing can only start with us and with our children, so let us begin, stay strong and carry on.

Some interesting background articles and more food for thought:

Youth and Disillusionment (Scott Atran | The Guardian)

Oil and ISIS (Erika Solomon, Guy Chazan & Sam Jones | The Financial Times)

Air strikes and the underestimation of civilians killed (Alice Ross | The Guardian)