“JE SUIS PARIS!”

Sheri Laizer in France | Exclusive to iKurd.net

“Mirror, mirror…“ minds so dark.

The comic actor led me, grinning, by the hand. Up the steep slopes of Beirut we climbed, dodging the bullets or the traffic. When I went to kiss him he drew back. He said he was not healed.

I kissed him anyway: it was the beginning of health perhaps – a flicker turning to a flame. War polarises love, becomes intimate at the centre of life, transforms the living into phantoms.

Lebanon teems with broken hearts but reaches for transcendence. Walls pockmarked by gunfire, windows never repaired. Raze the land, murder the neighbours, call it your ‘Homeland’.

Murderers made me an enemy. I resisted their ideology, announced I was at war [1]. War became intimate when it robbed me of my loves, stole their promises of happiness.

Before IS, Jabhat al-Nusra [2], Al-Qaeda, Boko Haram [3], al-Mourabitoun [4] and the Taliban, inter alia, there were others: the masterminds behind the Lockerbie bombing [5] as perverse as those that downed the Russian jet over Sinai. [6]

Hezbollah and Israel focus on annihilation in parallel time but the comic actor may still make Beirutis smile. He was intimate with strife and has emerged to live.

Focus on massacres, and abomination will stain the mind: terror demands attention but its satisfaction is destructive. Men cannot create from despair but longing may lend itself to genius.

I am Paris [7], Baghdad, Beirut, and al-Shams. I am the Kurds gassed by Saddam, Vietnam leaking Agent Orange.[8]

The divisions are false – terror unites us in resistance – State terror or terrorists seeking to become States, the scourge of the dehumanised.

The comedian smiled at me. We crossed the highway, running hand in hand. He had been there already and he understood. Words were superfluous but not all of us are mute. Gestures, too, are alight with truth. This is one of them.

“Je suis Paris,” Tunis [9], Bamako, [10] Nigerian girls robbed of home [11] and pacifists felled by Ankara’s suspect bombs [12]…

Read FEAR OF SNAKES – The ISIS Factor by Sheri Laizer

1 Declarations of the French President after the massacres in Paris committed by IS/Daesh on 13 November 2015. Francois Hollande, 16.11.2015, http://edition.cnn.com/2015/11/16/world/paris-attacks/ and President Obama, “We are all French now” http://edition.cnn.com/2015/11/24/politics/obama-francois-hollande-washington/
2 http://www.understandingwar.org/report/jabhat-al-nusra-syria
3 Boko Haram has pledged allegiance to IS and is also known as ISWAP –the Islamic State’s West Africa Province. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/boko-haram-overtakes-isis-as-worlds-deadliest-terror-organisation-a6737761.html
4 Details of the West African Jihadist terrorist group at http://www.counterextremism.com/threat/al-mourabitoun
5 Two official Libyan suspects identified in connection with December 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 101, 16 October 2015. http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/oct/15/lockerbie-bombing-two-libyans-suspects-pan-am-103
6 Daesh claimed responsibility for downing the Russian passenger flight on 31 October 2015. Read more at http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2015/11/18/438224/Daesh-Russia-plane-crash-Sinai-Dabiq-improvised-bomb
7 A week before the Paris attacks of 13 November 2015, IS appeared uncannily quiet. See this author predicting the terror group being poised to strike: Fear of Snakes: the ISIS Factor, Sheri Laizer, 8 November 2015.
8 Deadly side-affects of Agent Orange 51 years later. See, for example http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/10729-the-toxic-effects-of-agent-orange-persist-51-years-after-the-vietnam-war
9 Tunisia, where the Arab Spring for democratic change began in 2011 has suffered ISIS attacks on tourist and state targets, most recently just days after the Paris massacres. More than 3,000 Tunisians are reported to be fighting with ISIS. http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/11/27/us-tunisia-security-idUSKBN0TG1LL20151127#2FDteoLKuCuDOSuB.97 and see also: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/tunisia-bus-attack-isis-claims-responsibility-for-suicide-bomb-blast-killing-12-in-tunis-a6748411.html and http://edition.cnn.com/2015/11/27/africa/tunisia-explosion/index.html
10 https://islamists-attack-hotel-in-mali-2015-11-20
11 Enduring ordeal for the 219 schoolgirls kidnapped by Islamist extremist Boko Haram nearly 20 months ago. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-33259003 See also http://www.foxnews.com/world/2015/10/15/kidnapped-chibok-girl-reportedly-flees-boko-haram-says-others-alive/ and http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34494991
12 http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/world/2015-10/12/content_22159838.htm and see the monent the first bomb exploded at http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34494991

Sheri Laizer, a Middle East and North African expert specialist and well known commentator on the Kurdish issue. She is a senior contributing writer for iKurd.net. More about Sheri Laizer see below.

The opinions are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of iKurd.net or its editors.