Mr. Barack Obama, President of the United States
I’m sending you this message regardless of my name, religion, belonging, geographical location and career. I’m also sending it to you regardless of your name, religion, belonging, belonging of your father and grandfather and regardless of your speculating abilities, language skills and your brilliance in speaking and justifying.
I’m sending you this message from a human, just a human; since you are the president of the country that plays a major role in all global events … I’m sending it to you since you are the president that told the Syrians that you are hearing their voices.
Before I start, I will like to remind you that the main focus of your presidential campaign in Pennsylvania year 2008 was about “Mothers” where you talked about your mother that died in the year 1995 at the age of 53 after suffering from cancer. You also explained in a 30 minutes ad how difficult the last months of her life were and how she was worried about the medical treatment bills more than the treatment itself.
Americans sympathized a lot with the story of your mother and how she suffered, and your sorrow for the death of your mom made them note the importance of making a change in the medical systems and insurances and the importance of treating a human just as a human regardless of any other thing although your mom died in her bed, between her family and after a long treatment in good hospitals that serve advanced medical care. Their tears rolled as they remembered your words about how your mother waited for the huge bills with fear and how this fear reflected in a negative way on her feelings and on the way she responded to the treatment … and all is understood and justified.
I’ll go back to the main point of my message Mr. Obama, to the Syrians that are getting swallowed up by the seas and oceans where they turn into food for the fish down there.
To the Syrians that face the deadly barbed wires as they pass through the borders and bleed to death and their blood mark the borders of global shame.
To the Syrians that escape through the tanks of trucks and buses and get to where they are going as a cold dead body or a charred body.
To the Syrians that are kept in quarries as if they are an epidemic.
To the Syrians in isolated European camps that look like that of the Nazis where the authorities bartered their pride and humanity with a refugee paper.
To the Syrians that stand in front of the cameras where a six year old child comes up and says that she never knew what biscuits and sweets taste like and a ten years old boy says that he polishes shoes of the people passing by just to be able to afford a piece of bread.
I won’t talk about politics, but I will like to say that Syrians left their country for reasons that you know Mr. president even more than anyone else, they were obliged to walk between mountains and valleys to get to unknown shores, they paid all what they have to traders of death and got crammed by hundreds in primitive rickety boats that capsized with all who is on board because of a high wave or because of being chased by neighboring countries frigates. The floating dead bodies of the kids on the surface of the water informed the world that the trip is over so who didn’t die due to explosive barrels, bombs, bullets and knives, died by drowning.
Those are humans just like you, like me, and like any other human, God created them to have equal or semi equal chances in life, education, work, nourishment, medication, security, stability. And the west that you lead knew from day one that the Syrian crises is a regional and global crises where the needs of people overlapped with the conflict in the region and to claim the region in addition to the international barter done between different parties especially between you and Russia. You already knew that but left things collapse in a war of negotiation where many died, got injured or became refugees, sometimes to prove that dictatorship is just fate, or to prove that our societies are good examples for extremism, or to make radical changes in the region, or to pass on nuclear deals and always to keep Israel relaxed and maintain its superiority.
I don’t want to talk about politics although I did that somehow to point out responsibilities but I want to ask you, why should Syrians face a world conspiracy that is killing them inside their country or even ignoring that they are been killed? Why should the world also conspire to kill them even when they are leaving their country to escape from death? Mr. Obama, sea routes are clear and known and one advanced radar in Cyprus reveals the whole Mediterranean, so why did you disregard them when they went on board of primitive boats and why cause their death by chasing them? Land routes are also clear and known so why do the trucks of death face the same fate like the boats of death?
You show up in the American media if an American killed another American with a gun to talk about possessing individual arms as if you are talking about a national catastrophe and you try to legislate laws that forbid owning individual arms … you refuse seeing a gun ending the life of a person so please tell us about the duplication of feelings you have when you see all the armories of the world killing half a million Syrian? What a shame on a world that chases who are left alive to kill them in seas and prairies.
Back to the year 2008, I remember with the Americans and the world your words about the suffering of your mother with cancer and how her fear from the treatment bills reflected negatively on her feelings and how she responded to the treatment … Today, Syrians dream of dying in their own bed and without treatments, and as of their fear from the bills of massacres, that will not touch your feelings anyway.
I am saying this and I doubt that what I said will get to you or that someone will get what I said to you. Forget that you are going to leave the presidency, forget about the presidency, the Democratic Party, politics, profit, loss, and remember the punishment of God concerning the Syrian tragedy, especially the refugees’ victims, the fear in eyes of a mother on a primitive boat whose daughter was taken away by the water, the voice of a child asking her father for help and the dead body of her dad that preferred dying with his daughter rather than living alone with memories.
Remember God’s punishment and you were the one who told the Syrians few years back that you are hearing their voices … wishing they didn’t hear your voice.
Jassem Marzouk Boodai
Translated by: Rana Kaafarani
