Why not listen to overcome our global, Afghan aloneness?
October 26, 2010 by
Filed under Journey Updates
Please watch two minutes of our friends helping us to overcome aloneness- thank you Kathy, David Jerica & Douglas!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bTopDz1glE
And read “You are not alone”
by Kathy Kelly
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/10/24-9
If we listen, peace is never alone
Text of video
Overcoming sound
Overcoming tongues
Overcoming hesitance
Overcoming taste
Who’s the cook?
Faiz Jan…I’m not a cook.
Ali’s stirring so eggs won’t get burnt.
Overcoming nights
Overcoming time
Why not listen to overcome our loneliness?
Ali to ‘Faris’ in Gaza : your days are on us too, tell us when your heart has pain & we’ll endure..
Ghulamai : We share your pain…don’t worry…
Zekerullah : Always be in touch with us…& protect yourself from the bombs
Abdulai 
on’t be discouraged.We are always with you.
This is Kathy, I’m very moved…
Jerica: We’re in solidarity in you in small ways…
Why not listen to overcome our aloneness?
Other articles of our growing love below :
Afghan Peace Activist Youth Bridge Ethnic Divide
Bamiyan Diaries – Day One
by David Smith-Ferri
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/10/20-0
http://www.truth-out.org/afghan-peace-activist-youth-bridge-ethnic-divide64409
“War Does This to Your Mind”
by Kathy Kelly
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/10/21-10
http://www.truth-out.org/war-does-this-your-mind64452
Afghan Youth: Creating a New Courage
by Jerica Arents
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/10/23-0
In War-Torn Afghanistan, a Park Dedicated to Peace
by: David Smith-Ferri, t r u t h o u t | News Analysis
http://www.truth-out.org/in-war-torn-afghanistan-a-park-dedicated-peace64435
Bamiyan Diaries, Day Four: “Tell Them to Come to Afghanistan and Make Friends”
by David Smith-Ferri
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/10/25-4
Recovering from the shadows of the Afghan wars
October 23, 2010 by
Filed under Journey Updates
Please watch Khamad recovering from the shadows of the Afghan wars
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbayAkxVeQs
And read Kathy Kelly’s record of Khamad’s long pauses as he describes how ‘war does this to your mind’
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/10/21-10
War does this to your mind
Text of video
I am a boy seeking love,
but alas I live on the empty hills,
on the only land I’ve known
It hurts to tell you that they killed my father.
I miss him
and wish he were here.
My grandma tells me that loss brings strength;
I am not too sure
Have you ever woken up
to fields of God’s golden wheat
and wondered why
people are so full of themselves?
Do you ever feel sad,
a very deep sad?
I deal with it in silence,
so people call me a ‘worrier’
I have a friend
and I’ve told him things
which I’ve never mentioned to anyone
but now he has left
He tells me that
God will never abandon me
but as in the case with my father,
that doesn’t help
He then said that he loved me;
I’ve never heard that…
I’ve never heard that on these hills,
I cried till my heart was empty
I am a boy seeking love,
sounding the shepherd’s flute
in the only land I’ve known
“War does this to the mind.”
Is life like that?
Life is like that.
A life like ants….
Go on…go on…
Poem ( below ) written and read by David Smith Ferri
about a young Iraqi man Mustafa who,
like Khamad,
is recovering from the shadows of war
Like children crowding together at the edge of a bluff
the sea swirling below
we gather at the top of the stairwell
while first Yasir, and then Noah, climb down
and wade into Amman’s fading twilight
Returning, they half-push half-carry Mustafa in his wheelchair
up from those depths
across the threshold and into the apartment
A foaming salt water joy washes over us
He articulates how long the road to adulthood is
and how far he has come in teaching his body to stand, to balance
how close he is at 29 years
to learning to walk
Why not listen to the Bamiyan Diaries?
October 21, 2010 by
Filed under Journey Updates
“The first time we meet we’re friends, the second time, brothers & sisters.”
Why not listen to the Bamiyan Diaries?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSigIDZyp2k
Please read http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/10/20-0
Bamiyan Diaries – Day One
Text of video
The Afghan Youth Peace mountain boys welcome our peacemaking friends
“The first time we meet we’re friends, the second time, brothers & sisters.”
Hello, my name is Abdul Ali.
We have been looking forward to coming & we’re so glad to be here!
Welcome ( to Bamiyan )!
Looks like we have a soccer team here…
Abdul Ali, what are you doing?
I’m sweeping the house ( peace vigil tent )
Why not listen to one another?
David and the world’s need to change all perceptions…
…to listen to and to walk with one another
Why not listen to the Bamiyan Diaries?
Why not Listen?
October 12, 2010 by
Filed under Journey Updates
We invite the world to listen, because the people are perishing. Why not listen?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SboVUfhL4z8
Text of video
We’ve not been allowed to set up a tent for a peace vigil here at Bamiyan Peace Park…
to invite the world,
in the noise of hate,
to listen.
Why not listen?
LISTEN
Why not listen?
Why not Listen?
Why not LISTEN?
our Afghan vigil
…our hope is that this inner yearning & struggle
to listen to one another globally,
is eager to explode.
We vigil to LISTEN,
because people are perishing
Why not LISTEN?
our Afghan vigil
13th October to 17th October 2010
Bamiyan Peace Park???? ( to date, we’ve been disallowed to set up our tent)
( WE’LL EXPLORE POSSIBILITIES AND UPDATE YOU )
Afghanistan
13th Oct Night 1 : Listen, because people are perishing
14th Oct Night 2 : Listen in quiet
15th Oct Night 3 : Listen with a smile
16th Oct Night 4 : Listen to connect
17th Oct Night 5 : Listen to change
We’ll LISTEN to the world,
thus inviting all to LISTEN to one another
and to gamble on this force of LOVE.
If you should kill me unawares
September 16, 2010 by
Filed under Journey Updates
Heart to heart!
I want to be your friend.
To set my small heart free.
Zekerullah and Afghan youth ask the world to reach their human hearts*
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I529WInhaW0
*through Skype calls to the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers on the 21st September 2010 International Day of Peace….. If you and your friends would reach out this way, even for a minute, please email dougwmackey@gmail.com and arrange to talk with the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers!
“We will plan to be together the whole day of 21st to receive calls, for all of 24 hours from 8.00 am, … We’d rather take your calls than join the ‘officials’ in paying lip service to peace…and we’d rather stay awake to hear your voices than sleep without those human connections we yearn for.” Hakim and the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers
I refuse the dictation that our pain is passive, or alone.
I refuse to weep this way.
“If you should kill me unawares…
don’t forget I had asked for your friendship & love.”
15-year-old Afghan boy Zekerullah.
Heart to heart, Zekerullah asks for your phone call
It feels like all the anger and doubts of life and death have ‘collected’ within us in Afghanistan.
It isn’t easy.
We tell each other that we’ll cope somehow with the challenges of survival and harsh physical circumstances before us, even to cope unwillingly with death. What we can’t cope with is the global poverty of love and truth.
We see ourselves choosing empty ‘success’ over friendship and thriving on the subjugation of earth and ‘the others’. We can’t seem to appeal more from our leaders than a penchant for ‘greater’ self-interest, money and power.
And oh, such distance between souls.
Hence, we live constantly hoping and constantly despairing.
We constantly hope because love imparts resolve to people of any age.
We constantly despair because hate seems so uncontrollably noisy.
We walk around hoping and despairing.
We dream that intact, independent spirits will understand our pain and do what Man must do to improve on life’s passage, to refuse this sorrow.
We’ve seen the rich plundering those already dying. It fills us with utter disrespect, so why?
We’ve stomached the powerful executing those already voiceless. It destroys our equilibrium of justice, so why?
We’ve heard everyone claiming the winning strategy over those already cornered. It mocks a child’s wisdom, so why?
We’ve pitted God/Love against Satan/Hate in hurting and killing. It drives us to frantic hypocrisy, so why?
We’ve demonized ‘the others’ to deify ourselves. It amputates our shared essentials, so why?
We’ve tried war. It doesn’t work. We know it doesn’t work, so why?
Why?
Why this incongruent life of self-absorption, anger and fear?
When Abdulai visits his father’s grave, when Faiz remembers his brother smothered within bullet-ear-shot and when Parwin asks about the 3000 plus dead of September 11, grief re-catches up with them.
In Afghanistan, grief is like gravity, imperceptibly hurtling us downwards till death makes it un-necessary. It weighs on us like it weighs on Americans or Iraqis or Palestinians or Jews, or you.
It makes us doubt life’s flailing suggestion of goodwill.
For one too many, when we can no longer find relief in any fellow human being, ‘suicide’ relieves us of life.
Then evening came, another day of tough un-affirmed labour, more snipe remarks at his ‘uselessness’, and Zekerullah looks away at the impersonal distance, teary but expecting practically nothing.
Zekerullah takes in the same haughty and violent news on the radio, we extend each other our hands to keep our human affections alive, and he offers me the simplicity that which clarifies my doubting moments, the smile of a child at heart, gently echoing :
I refuse the dictation that our pain is passive, or alone.
I refuse to weep this way.
With this smile transforming us, Zekerullah isn’t shy in crying out to you, you who may hear him as we should hear ourselves, “Why not love?”
For we constantly hope that your love would find some way.
Yes, we keep our hearts hoping that our love would find some way.
Heart to heart!
I want to be your friend.
To set my small heart free.
Text of video
Love is how we’ll ask for peace!
We’ve always had a wish to bring peace through love.
How can Afghanistan become peaceful?
We should act truthfully & not lie. We shouldn’t do wrong…then Afg may become peaceful.
Perhaps the people of the world don’t believe that we ( Afghans ) understand love.
But in our families & among friends, we wish for love & practice it.
If your younger brother was killed by a bomb & you were offered money in compensation, would you accept the money?
No, I won’t accept the money because firstly, why was he killed? Secondly, those responsible should be punished so they won’t infringe on the rights of other people
The monetary compensation shouldn’t be accepted as money doesn’t match up to the value of a person
In this war, if you should kill me unawares, don’t forget I had asked for your friendship & love.
Love is how we’ll ask for peace!
Are your legs strong? My legs….yes, they’re strong. Show me your strong legs…
Zekerullah fulfilled his promise to US Ambassador Eikenberry to go to school
If you should kill me unawares, don’t forget I had asked for your friendship & love.
Come become friends from the bottom of our heart-to-hearts!
Heart to heart!
Please call us on International Day of Peace
21st of September 2010
We’d love to hear your voice!
Peacemakers everywhere, be encouraged by Afghan beauty
July 18, 2010 by
Filed under Journey Updates
Dear peacemakers everywhere, when you get tired & discouraged, take another look at Afghans and the beauty of their home.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2EwRQWHQVU
home of Afghans
And ask, “Why not love?”
Thank you for asking “Why not love?”
Afghan smile
4th of July Afghan message to General Petraeus about Kandahar & relationships
July 4, 2010 by
Filed under Journey Updates
Please know that love is how ordinary Afghans want dignified, independant relationships
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llR-TmeD-Tw
Text of video
What are you doing?
We are making cell phone pouches for other youth in Kandahar.
Why are you making these for them?
As gifts.
What’s your purpose in this?
Peace. Our purpose is peace.
What is the principle of your work?
Love.
Is love possible among traditional enemies? Yes!
Love is more pragmatic than war.
Instead of asking for unity in COIN,
we should ask for unity in relations.
This cell phone pouch is a gesture of peace & friendship for the youth in Kandahar
We say to the youth of Kandahar : even a little of this love of ours is stronger than the wars of the world!
Our peace cell phone pouches reached
the Kandahar youth a week ago
We cry, “Build relations, not hate.”
In these withering times, what can we say?
We’re sorry that we hardly trust one another.
We know that violence doesn’t build trust.
It shatters trust.
But it’s time. It’s time to do everything differently.
The time to practice love clearly
is when none would applaud it.
Why not love?
Person by person,
Steady thread by steady thread.
Heartfelt letter from Tajik and Hazara youth in Bamiyan to Pushtoon youth in Kandahar, sent with our packet of hand-sewn peace cell phone pouches
Salam from every one of us, Mohd Jan, Abdul Ali, Zekerullah, Abdulai, Ghulam, Faiz Ahmad, Lala, Abdul Raziq, Mohd Hussein, on behalf of all the youth in Bamiyan, to the youth in Kandahar and the ‘small’ people of the world,
In these withering times, what can we say?
We carry your painful doubts and are saddened by all that’s happening in Kandahar.
We’re sorry that none of us have been able to bring peace and we share the grief of mothers who feel forever emptied.
We’re sorry that we hardly trust one another. We know that violence doesn’t build trust. It shatters trust.
But it’s time. It’s time to do everything differently.
The time to practice love clearly is when none would applaud it.
We hand-sewed these cell phone pouches as gifts of love and friendship for you in Kandahar.
In encouragement, we say to the youth and people of Kandahar, and all the ‘small’ people of the world: “Even a little of our love is stronger than the wars of the world.”
“Why not love?!”
Sincerely,
Our Journey to Smile
http://ourjourneytosmile.com/blog
Rewriting Afghanistan’s narrative, ‘Why not love?’
June 24, 2010 by
Filed under Journey Updates
Vandals ‘dripped’ blood-red paint over our work…we mustn’t be paralyzed to keep asking : ‘Why not love?’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8l26PMcdz0
Text of video
We were advised : “Afghans don’t use the word love.”
We still wrote “Why not love?” at Bamiyan Peace Park
Later, vandals ‘dripped’ blood-red paint over our work…
We mustn’t be paralyzed by the desperate war narratives…
We came to Kabul to buy a dove for Bamiyan Peace Park
Faiz, what is the seed of peace?
The seed of peace is love, is friendship
Even a little of our love is stronger than the wars of the world!
Why not love?
Why not love?
The coalition asks ‘ Why not COIN?’
We the people must ask ‘Why not love?’
When we fall, we will get up again.
Get up to listen & love again !
Why not love?
building peace
Why not love?
We hoard an unsustainable power.
McCrystal, Obama, Al Qaeda and the Taliban humanly crave for affirmation but are trapped in unsustainable power. In this self-constructed cage, we prosper our own privileges.
The elite keep choosing violent conflict though it gets us nowhere nearer each other nor nearer safety. Ordinary folk like us help with our tax-payer money and complicit silence.
We are in a cage that is cracking, so we desperately call it a ‘democracy’ or an ‘amoral morality’ or a war against ‘terror’.
I am part of this decay ; you see, I’m living in Afghanistan and Afghans and internationals are dying.
People are dying, NOT objects.
Our world mistakes war as ‘justified solutions’, when it’s really a lust. We deceive our greed with ‘necessities’ and selectively hear “I must be correct, wronged AND good.”
Our self-absorption ‘spectates’angrily as oil is spilled, wealth is monopolized and worst, as blood is shed. We don’t want these inequalities but stand paralyzed against both ‘democratic and undemocratic powers.’
Replacing General Stanley McCrystal won’t change ‘war, terrorism or their industries’.
Violent money and power can’t be replaced by more militarism but by more diplomacy, and not by a civilian-military diplomacy but by a civilian-civilian diplomacy. You can’t have a mother nurturing her child, even a ‘deviant’ child, with the lure of mammon and the threat of guns.
Any general would serve best now under a civilian presidential mandate to reverse escalation and execute a restorative withdrawal.
We the people need to keep building massive global conversations that lead to concrete kindness.
Why not love?
What would we lose?
Why not say, “We relate badly. We don’t know one other anymore. Our politicians’ self-interest mirrors ourselves and this narrow abyss is suffocating everyone.”
Instead of risking the death of reform, why not take a day or more off work, get to our communities and go on-line, make phone calls etc, to organize the conversations and encounters that would reconcile us with each other globally? Not mainly with agreeable ‘allies’ but more so with perceived ‘enemies’.
Sustain a wave.
19 year old Faiz says, “The seed of peace is love, is friendship.” When asked by international peacemakers how Afghans can be helped, 14 year old Abdulai said, “Just enCOURAGE us.”
Through these small, cumulative instances of shared compassion, if love could change everything, everything could change.
rewriting Afghanistan’s narrative
Afghan youth’s call to the world “WHY NOT LOVE”?
May 24, 2010 by
Filed under Journey Updates
<object width=”425″ height=”344″><param name=”movie” value=”http://www.youtube.com/v/VcDJr5pEAFk&hl=en&fs=1″></param><param name=”allowFullScreen” value=”true”></param><param name=”allowscriptaccess” value=”always”></param><embed src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/VcDJr5pEAFk&hl=en&fs=1″ type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowscriptaccess=”always” allowfullscreen=”true” width=”425″ height=”344″></embed></object>
Please watch a prelude of the Afghan youth’s call to the world “WHY NOT LOVE?”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcDJr5pEAFk
We say to the youth of Kandahar : “Even a little of our love is stronger than the wars of the world!
We’re not spurting naive rhetoric or romance
We’re calling the world to forge wide-scale relationships of integrity
Why not love?
All the ‘small’ people of the world,
join us urgently in asking
WHY NOT LOVE?
More to come soon …
Afghans break the violent global silence with love 2
March 24, 2010 by
Filed under Journey Updates
Please watch Faiz, Mohd Jan and Zekerullah join Abdullah in breaking the Afghan silence
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEukg9T9S2E
Zekerullah’s peace
It’s been more than 30 years of wars in Afghanistan
Faiz,is it logical to raise the voice of peace in a scenario of war & bloodshed?
Yes, we have an Afghan proverb which says that ‘droplet by droplet, a river will form. In this darkness,
brightness & light are needed.
Faiz’s river
A desperate, confused, proud & deceptive in-humanity is lingering over Afg
Mohd Jan, is it logical to think that love, compassion & mercy can work in a global culture of selfishness? Yes, because selfishness will ultimately kill us all while love preserves our humanity.
Mohd Jan’s humanity
Victory needs to be lovingly re-defined in Afghanistan
Zekerullah , is it logical to want peace when the whole world wants victory in the Afghan war?
Yes, because in the end, it is in peace that victory is found.
American 15-year-old Elisa to Afghan 14-year-old Abdulai : “My friend…we are human, we must try our best. Don’t let go of your hope.”
Abdulai, is it logical for you to struggle for love in a world full of hate?
Yes, because one day, love will triumph!
YOUTH PEACE VOLUNTEERS OF AFGHANISTAN
Our Journey to Smile
See historic videos by these Afghan youth participate in a live discussion to Afghanistan
Tickets: OFS members $5, General $8, Youth $3
Historic Capitol Theater
(360) 754-6670 www.olympiafilmsociety.org
Saturday March 27 6:30 pm
Olympia Film Society
206 5th Avenue SE ~ Downtown Olympia
Washington, USA
In Washington D.C, the broadcast will be at Busboys and Poets (5th and K st), 9pm EST
A project of the northwest peace movement & Olympia Fellowship of Reconciliation
Our Journey to Smile’s Afghan Videos will be broadcast with ‘live narration’on Saturday March 27 6:30 pm at Historic Capitol Theater in Olympia, Washington USA, with simultaneous broadcasts in Washington DC ( Busboys and Poets 5th and K st) 9pm EST) Conn & New York