Kite Runner Author Khaled Hosseini responds to OJTS Youth Letter to UN Hague Conference
April 16, 2009 by
Filed under Journey Updates
Kite Runner is a bestseller book and film written by Khaled Hosseini. It tells a poignant story of the friendship between Amir, a Pushtoon boy, and Hassan, a Hazara boy through the tumultuous periods of the Soviet occupation and the Taliban in Afghanistan.
http://www.khaledhosseini.com/
http://www.kiterunnermovie.com/
Dear Our Journey to Smile:
Thank you for sharing your Letter of Humanity’s Love from Afghan youth to the UN Hague Conference. It was very moving and I am grateful you have included me in your distribution of it. I wish your organization the best of luck with its goals.
Best,
Khaled Hosseini
Dear Khaled,
Thanks to you too!
Thanks so much for your personal reply; it encouraged us deeply, particularly Abdulai and Raziq who have watched The Kite Runner 5 times!
Do stay in touch and join us on the 21st of September 2009 at the Bamiyan Buddhas if your schedule allows you.
Every human heart wonders about the 1000-times-over sort of friendship. Thanks for increasing our hope and our imagination!
( Be at peace! )
Our Journey to Smile
Will Humanity Forget, Constantly, constantly?
April 12, 2009 by
Filed under Journey Updates
Laith filmed this family attempting to flee Fallujah - ten minutes later they were dead
Will we forget, constantly, constantly?
Or will we forever brush the discomfort aside because that corpse was not our mother’s or our child’s?
Or will we join Laith Mushtaq in saying, “Fallujah ( in-humane, senseless death ) never leaves my mind.”
Don’t we realize what ANY ‘army does on the ground’ and if we do, what do we choose to do or say about such a realization?
Dear Laith,
Thanks for your work and your article, because media, like everything else, should help us understand ourselves.
We, Afghan youth, understand those images that never leave your mind. We have to learn to cope somehow and we need to be strong.
And to hope that human civilization can change. If it doesn’t ?? ?????” What can we do? “
Sincerely,
Our Journey to Smile
Al Jazeera ‘Fallujah never leaves my mind’
By Laith Mushtaq, cameraman
http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2009/04/200948132212418175.html
Laith Mushtaq was one of only two non-embedded cameramen working throughout the April 2004 ‘battle for Fallujah’ in which 600 civilians died.
When I think of Fallujah, I think of the smell. The smell was driving me crazy. In a dead body, there is a kind of liquid. Yellow liquid. The smell is disgusting, really. It sticks in your nose. You cannot eat anymore.
And you can’t get the pictures off your mind, because every day you see the same: Explosion, death, explosion, death, death.
After work, you sit down and notice there are pieces of flesh on your shoes and blood on your trousers. But you don’t have time to ask why.
I had to show the truth to people outside of Iraq.
I still remember the nurses couldn’t carry the woman because she was in too many pieces, people were jumping back when they saw it. Then, one nurse shouted: “Hey, she looks like your mother.”
In the Iraqi language that means: “She could be your mother, so treat her like you’d treat your mom.”
At some point, I couldn’t move anymore. I sat down on the street and kept smoking. I couldn’t move. I see what’s happening around me, but I can’t move. Khallas [enough]. I didn’t have any energy left.
The Americans said our pictures stirred up hatred against them. But what I did was only showing what their army did on the ground.
I don’t hate them, I don’t want vengeance, I just wish they had understood what they were doing.
US military admits killing mother, children
Afghan News Network 9/4/09
The US military in Afghanistan admitted Thursday that four people its troops killed in a raid were not “combatants”, after Afghans said they included a mother and her children, with a baby dying afterwards.
Need Afghan children respond to Obama’s New Afghan Policy at all?
April 4, 2009 by
Filed under Journey Updates
Need Afghan children respond to Obama’s new Afghan policy at all??
Will Obama listen as he says he would, to ordinary Afghans…… ordinary Afghan children?
Do ordinary Afghans have any Voice at all over what Obama, NATO and the world decide FOR them?
This is the Voice of ordinary Afghan children, through Abdulai and Raziq. It has NO political or religious intent.
This is Our Journey to Smile.
Afghan Focus for Key NATO summit
BBC 04/04/09
US President Barack Obama wants European nations to commit more troops and funds, but so far new pledges have been limited.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has offered a temporary increase in troops ahead of Afghanistan’s presidential elections in August.
But despite European expressions of support for the new American strategy, it was not clear whether the long-term pledges sought by the US would be forthcoming.
International Day of Peace- Journey to Smile Commitment
March 31, 2009 by
Filed under Journey Updates, Our Journey to Afghanistan 25/9/09
The United Nations’ International Day of Peace - marked every year on September 21 - is a global holiday when individuals, communities, nations and governments highlight efforts to end conflict and promote peace.
Established by U.N. resolution in 1982, “Peace Day” has grown to include millions of people around the world who participate in all kinds of events, large and small.
Our Journey to Smile has made a commitment to Peace on this day.
http://internationaldayofpeace.org/participate/events_calendar.html
Our Journey to Smile International Peace Day event : ‘half-marathon peace trek’ to the Shah Fuladi Hindu Kush mountain lakes. This will be held on the 25th September 2009 - in support and in remembrance of Peace in this region.
Our Journey to Smile will ‘gather’ all the youth peace volunteers.
Peace Volunteers- are wanted.
Our target is for a maximum of 200 peace trekkers, perhaps 100-150 Afghans and 50- 100 internationals.
Please mark and join in on the 25th of September for the ‘half-marathon peace trek’ to the Shah Fuladi Hindu Kush mountain lakes. On the Journey to smile.
For Peace.
Afghans Smile for Love Forgiveness Peace Humanity
March 26, 2009 by
Filed under Journey Updates
Can we smile?
Despite the war, the suffering, the inhumanity?
Why did they kill my father?
They didn’t even know him.
Why do they make guns instead of bread?
Why? why? Why?
We wish for peace.
We wish for humanity.
We will all die one day.
What can we do now?
love, forgiveness, peace, humanity
Can we?
Can we all?
We long for peace, for humane relations, for a decent life.
We want to smile.
Smile - from the Heart
February 22, 2009 by
Filed under Videos
