My love, this is not the world I was dreaming of giving you when you were born…

These were not the news I hoped you would read with a morning coffee in your hand.

For you, I dreamt a world where people had learned not to repeat their past mistakes. A place where life has the highest and most precious value.

I wanted to teach you the meaning of the word ‘love’. I never thought that I will, one day, have to explain to you why there is so much hate.

I wished you could see a backpack on the ground and assume that its owner had just forgotten it there, and not fear for the danger it could pose. I hoped you could imagine notes, pencils and books inside that bag and not its potential destruction and death.

I wanted to sit down with you and explain the great value of trust, and now I am here trying to convince you that you should always suspect.

I had hoped you would go to concerts fearing your parents’ anger when you came home late, and not fear going there as a soldier to war.

I want to see you walk hand in hand with the person you love, looking at the sky and visiting places you have never been to. Not cautiously observing people and expecting cars to ram into innocent fathers, mothers and children.

I cannot even tell you to go and fight your enemy, to go and defend the ideals you were raised in. This is not a regular war, my love. There is no country and enemy to fight. Terrorists have no one enemy. It is the whole world, a normal walk, they want to wipe out.

When you cried for the first time, I looked into your eyes and promised to protect you from all evils in the world. I prayed you would always be happy and joyful.

Humanity is still here because there were always a few people who never stopped believing.

When you walk in the street, when you come back home, when you go to sleep and when you get up, remember what my grandmother told me when I asked her, how could you have more children after you experienced the fierce and violence of war?

They deprived us of everything, she told me then.
But one thing they could not take away from us.
The courage to go on and believe in the endless power of good.

Gheula Canarutto Nemni