THE HANDSTAND
MAY 2005
Animation
shows the Sun's last 250-million-year orbit around the
center of the galaxy (GC), and other stars converging
toward the Sun, ending with all of them nearer the Sun
today. May load slowly. Credit: ESO
When is our mother coming back?'
by Ali Samoudi
April 21, 2005
A 13 year-old
girl from Jenin Refugee Camp is writing a letter to Kofi
Anan. Sandi Nasser Al Sa'di is appealing to international
organizations to help her reach the UN General Assembly
in New York. Sandi wants to hand-deliver her letter to
the Secretary General of the UN. She fears if not
hand-delivered, the Israeli government may confiscate her
letter, or it may take a place among many others on the
dusty shelves of the UN marked "Palestine."
"I am calling on the Secretary General of the UN,
whose job was established to guarantee the human rights,
the dignity, and the life of human beings. I am calling
because the Israeli oppression has reached to a certain
point, and my life has become a small prison that is not
so different from the bars of the prison that are holding
my parents. This is the time that we live different
suffering and oppression at the hands of
the occupation that reached my mother, Qahira Al Sa'di.
She was taken from our house.
"Tens of soldiers invaded our house in the middle of
the night and they took our mother from her bed. They
have deprived us from her sympathy and protection. Our
screams and tears did not help her when the soldiers
handcuffed her and took her to the arrest center to face
the torture and the hard investigation."
"For two years, Your Excellency, I am tearing my
insides out with nostalgia to see my mother who is
isolated, arrested and oppressed in the Telmond Prison.
"They were not happy just to arrest her, to torture
her, humiliate her, take away her dignity, and deprive
her of the minimum of her rights, which are visits with
her children.
"Since her arrest I didn't see the face of my mother
and each time I try to see her with my brothers they are
refusing and insisting on torturing us in that way."
"The feasts and the happy occasions come, and my
mother is away from me, arrested without a reason, only
because she's Palestinian.
"In the feasts I don't wear the nice clothes and I
don't know the taste of happiness. The Occupation
deprived me my childhood, my right to life. How can I be
happy while my mother is in prison? From where does
happiness come while the symbol of motherhood, sympathy,
and humanity, are imprisoned and under siege, threatened
by hard levels of torture?
"I am dying seeing the children in the arms of their
mothers. I am dying from inside. I now hate school,
life, and the street because the imprisonment of my
mother deprived me from all the tastes of happiness and
life. My brothers, Your Excellency, are crying all the
times and sometimes refusing to eat or drink. They don't
know what the playgrounds are. They sleep with fear and
tears, and wake up with fear and tears. They have only
one question: 'When is our mother coming back?'"
"You are the United Nations. They refuse to release
my mother even for a few hours. They prevent us from
meeting her, even for a few seconds. They torture us
every
second. And because we are Palestinians, the arrest of my
mother was not enough because a year ago they invaded our
house again and took my father. It is a scene I will
never forget, because I woke up to the sounds of bullets
and bombs, and the screams of soldiers and their faces
were painted black and they were holding all sorts of
weapons. They invaded our house, arrested our father and
left us alone without a mother or a father. We still do
not know until when this destiny will continue.
"My father and mother are imprisoned and I am asking
for all the living conscience in the world to try to help
us while we are alone again and our grandmother is crying
day and night. Some of her sons were killed and others
arrested. We are crying and all we know in this life are
tears and despair. The occupation is not listening to our
screams. It's depriving us our childhood. So do you hear
our cry?
"We don't want money or petrol or gold or houses or
games or playgrounds. We have only one wish. We are
asking you to help us reach her. We are tired from
waiting, begging and hoping, while going between the Red
Cross, Red Crescent and the Prisoner Society. We want the
chance to feel the warmth of our mother and our
childhood. We want our mother and our father."
* * *
The European Southern
Observatory group said the red image is the first direct
shot of a planet around another star.bbc