Stories and News No. 1273
Well, you know, this is stronger than me. When I read or listen to a statement that strikes me in a particular way, I feel the extreme need to imagine the scene. To see it, even relive it as if we were in a cinema or at the theater - which for me are still a kind of magic - or even better for my tastes, reread it as a story.
So, I try to put together the various pieces, those connected directly to the scene, see in this case the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but also indirectly, like the recent publication of a book that explains in detail how China - like the US, Russia itself, but also France and the UK - finance projects especially in developing countries in Asia and Africa, disproportionately benefiting the political groups of presidents or prime ministers. With the result of increasing corruption and instability in the nations that receive the funds, making them further dependent on the allegedly generous exploiters... oops, I meant the subsidiaries.
Anyway, let's get to the scene I told you about.
Imagine a mother with a baby.
A thin woman exhausted by unspeakable, inhuman trials that no living creature should face, let alone the one who gives life to life.
The child is equally emaciated and jaded. Tired by a fatigue that in such a short life should not even be imagined.
Despite that, today, as much as this precise moment, is one of the good ones. Indeed, we could also call it the wonderful time, because it is when he is about to make a gesture that on the coasts of the inhabitants born with the table set is ordinary stuff like tap water and mattress springs.
It happens that the bowl is magically almost full and although for a few seconds the mother will have the feeling of being able to do her favorite job. The essential one, the reason for the first joy and the hope that every sacrifice will build horizons strictly in the plural form for the beloved one.
Before her baby's suddenly brightened eyes, she grabs the spoon with her free hand and fills it with the tiniest of portions. Sometimes she thinks of doing it to make this priceless ritual last as long as possible, instead of allowing her child's fragile stomach to digest the precious grace that some simply call food without further damage.
Nonetheless, the spell that is far from being taken for granted for both of them is shattered by a voice: "I'm sorry, mother, but you have to give me that dish and what it contains."
"Why?" she says with trembling lips, as well as every cell of her body, terrified at the very thought of deluding her child after having convinced him that instead of unhealthy air, dust and flies this time he would have swallowed something good, something useful, something right. "My son is hungry..."
The answer is literally inspired by the above statement, recently released by the head of the United Nations World Food Program, David Beasley, about the conditions in which nearly 50 million people find themselves in 43 famine-stricken countries, and that now are further at risk due to the lack of grain caused by the blockade of ports in Ukraine: "Because I need the food of hungry children to give to those who are dying of hunger..."
That's it, that's all. I found these words shocking and I hope that imagining the life behind them has helped you as well as myself to better understand how crazy, absurd and cruel is the global society that we have built over the years.
We have to see things fully, I think, because I can't imagine any other way to make most of us convinced that a different idea of the world is not only possible, it is indispensable...