in the middle of the night
with the sound of a heavy explosion it was deep at night i do not
in my room was shaking my heart my windows my bed
i looked out the windows
and i saw a full half circle of explosion i thought it was just like the movies but the movies had not conveyed them in the powerful image that i was seeing
full of bright red and orange and gray and a full circle of explosion and i kept on staring at it until
it disappeared i went back to my bed and i prayed and i secretly thanked god
that that missile did not land on my family 's home that it did not kill my family that night
and i still feel guilty about that prayer for the next day i learned that that missile landed on my brother 's
and killed him and his father but did not kill his mother or his sister
his mother showed up the next week at my brother 's classroom and begged seven year old kids
to share with her any picture they may have
of her son for she had lost everything
this is not a story of a nameless survivor of war and nameless refugees whose stereotypical images we see in our newspapers and our
tv with tattered clothes dirty face scared eyes
this is not a story of a nameless someone who lived in some war who we do not know their hopes their dreams their accomplishments their families their beliefs their values
is my story
was that girl i am
another image and vision of another survivor
i am that refugee and i am that
you see
i grew up in a war torn iraq and i believe that there are two sides of wars and we've only seen
one side of it we only talk about one side of it but there's another side
that i have witnessed
as someone who lived in it and someone who ended up working in
i grew up with the colors of war the red colors of fire and
the brown tones of earth as it explodes in
the piercing silver of an exploded missile so bright that nothing can protect your eyes from it
i grew up with the sounds of war the staccato sounds of gunfire the wrenching booms of explosions
drones of jets flying overhead and the wailing warning sounds of sirens these are the sounds you
but they are also the sounds of dissonant concerts of a flock of birds
screeching in the night
the high pitched honest cries of children and the thunderous
a friend of mine said is not about sound at all it is actually
of humanity
i have since left iraq
a group called women for women international that ends up working with women survivors of wars in my travels and in my work from congo
to afghanistan from sudan to rwanda i have not only that the colors and the sounds of war are the same
but the fears of war is the same you know there is a fear of dying and do not believe
the hero is not afraid it is very scary to go through that feeling of i am about to die or i could die in this explosion
the worst kind of fear is the fear as samia a bosnian woman once told me who survived the four years siege of sarajevo she said the fear of
the i in me
of losing the i in me that's what my mother
in iraq used to tell me
it's like dying from inside out
woman once told me it is not about the fear of one death she said sometimes i feel i die ten times
one day as she was describing the marches of soldiers and the sounds of their bullets and she said but it's not fair because there is only one life and there should only be one
only seeing one side of war we have only been
and consumed with high level preoccupations over troop levels draw down time lines surges and sting operations
when we should be examining the details of where the social fabric
has been most torn where the community has improvised and survived and shown acts of resilience and amazing courage just to keep life going
is the language of sterility how casually we treat casualties
in the context of this topic this is where we conceive of rape and casualties as inevitabilities
eighty percent of refugees around the world are women and children oh ninety percent of modern war casualties are civilians seventy five percent of them are
women and children how interesting oh half a million women in rwanda get raped in one hundred days or as we speak now
of thousands of congolese women are getting raped and mutilated how interesting these just become numbers that we refer to
the front of of wars is increasingly non human eyes peering down on our perceived enemies from space guiding missiles toward unseen targets
while the human conduct of the orchestra of media relations in the event that this particular drone
we are missing a completely other side of wars we are missing my mother 's story
who made sure with every siren with every raid with every cut off of electricity she played puppet shows for my brothers and i so we would not be scared of the sounds of explosions
we are missing the story of fareeda a music teacher a piano teacher in sarajevo who made sure that she kept the music school open
every single day in the four years of siege in sarajevo and walked to that school despite the snipers shooting at that school and
the piano the violin the cello playing the whole duration of the war with students wearing their gloves and hats and coats that was her fight that was her resistance
we are missing the story of nehia a palestinian woman in gaza who the minute there was a cease fire in the last year 's war she left out of home
we are missing the stories of violet who despite surviving genocide in the church massacre she kept on going on burying bodies cleaning homes cleaning the streets
we are missing stories of women who are literally keeping life going in the midst of wars do you
do you know that people fall in love in war and go to school and go to factories and hospitals and get divorced and go dancing and go playing
and live life going and the ones who are keeping that life are women
are two sides of war there is side that fights and there is a side that keeps the schools and the factories and the hospitals open
there is a side that is focused on winning battles and there is a side that is focused on winning life
there is a side that leads the front line discussion and there is a side that leads the back line discussion there is a side that thinks that peace is the end of fighting
and there is the side that thinks that peace is the arrival of schools and jobs there is a side that is led
to understand how do we build lasting peace
we must understand war and peace from both sides
we must have a full picture of what that means in order for us to understand what peace means
we need to understand as one sudanese woman once told me peace is the fact that my toenails are growing back again
she grew up in sudan in southern sudan for twenty years of war where it killed one million people and displaced five million refugees
many women were taken as slaves by rebels and soldiers as sexual slaves who were forced also to carry the ammunition and the water
and the food for the soldiers so that woman walked for twenty years so she would not be kidnapped again
and only when there was some sort of peace
toenails grew back again we need to understand peace from a toenail 's perspective we
need to understand that we cannot actually have negotiations of ending of wars or peace without fully including women at the negotiating table
i find it amazing that the only group of people who are not fighting and not killing and not pillaging and not burning and not raping
and the group of people who are mostly though not exclusively who are keeping life going in the midst of war are not included at the negotiating table
do argue that women lead the back line discussion but there are also men who are excluded from that discussion the doctors who are not fighting
the artists the students the men who refuse to pick up the guns they are too excluded from the negotiating tables
there is no way we can talk about a lasting peace building of democracy sustainable economies any kind of stability if we do not fully include women
no way we can talk about the building of stability if we don't start investing in women and girls
did you know that one year of the world 's military spending equals
hundred years of the u n budget and equals
two thousand nine hundred and twenty eight years of the u n budget allocated for women if we just reverse that distribution of funds perhaps
it is the right thing to do not only because it is the right thing to do for all of us to build sustainable and lasting peace today but it is for the future
and mutilated in front of them and her children saw their nine year old sibling killed in front of them how they're doing okay right now
she said but what i worry about the most is not any of that i worry that my children have hate in their hearts
and when they grow up they want to fight again the killers of their father and their brother we need to invest in women because that's our only chance
to ensure that there is no more war in the future that mother has a better chance to heal her children than any peace agreement can do
lots of good news to start with these women that i told you about are dancing and singing every single day and if they can who are we not to dance
that girl that i told you about ended up starting women for women international group that impacted one million people sent eighty million dollars and i started this from zero nothing
for a change we have a better equality we have equality we have a representation and we understand war both from the front line and the back line discussion
rumi a thirteenth century sufi poet says out beyond the worlds of right doings and wrong doings there is a field i will meet you there
when the soul lies down in that grass the world is too full to talk about ideas
out beyond the
there is a field and there are many women and men are meeting there let us make this field a much bigger place
let us all meet in that field thank you
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