Wake Up World: Ezra Is You

I’m crying for a boy I never met. I never saw his face. I never heard his voice.

But that boy is you, and that boy is me. Can’t you see? It is one and the same enemy.

There is nowhere to put this pain. I want to take the world by the throat and shake it. Wake up! Wake up!

I want to get in my car and speed to the nearest checkpoint. To sweet-talk my way through the guards. To follow my GPS to the village where this cursed terrorist came from, and burn down his house. I want to storm the police station that is holding him, and rip his skin from his bones with my bare words, with my screams. To make sure he can never do this again. To make sure he doesn’t go free in a matter of years, in a desperate exchange for one of our own. I want to bury his body so deep in the sea that no one but a hungry shark will find him.

And of course, I want to do none of these things. I just want to sprint from hilltop to hilltop, like the Greek marathoner, lighting torches as I go. World, wake up! Don’t you see – there is but one face to this enemy. This is your fight, this is your problem. He could have just been easily standing at the sidelines in Boston or having dinner in Paris or riding a bus in London. He wasn’t supposed to die any more than you are. It was a simple case of the wrong place, the wrong time.

But the silence is deafening. No Facebook gimmicks, no around-the-clock news, no solidarity lights lit up on buildings. There could have been one or a hundred or a thousand, and it would have made no difference. The world is colorblind.

How do you choose who you choose to mourn? How do you take yourselves seriously? Can’t you see through the hypocrisy – can’t you see it’s all the same? Terror is terror is terror. A suicide vest is a suicide vest. The names of the groups may change, but their mission stays the same. Go and ask them for yourselves!

And if you think: it wasn’t me. It wasn’t my city. It wasn’t my country. I didn’t know that boy – so it’s not my problem. Well, guess what. He did speak your language. He wore your clothes, he ate your food, he made the same jokes you make. He didn’t want to die any more than you do. He believed in peace, he believed in the good in people. Ezra is you.

World, oh world, oh sorry world –

Where are your eyes?