A magic Blanket, one of Sophie Ramsay Birth-day Letters
By: Abdul-Aziz Ali Omer
This is not a goode-bye. This is a thank you. Thank you Sophie for the support , solidarity and it would be a remiss if one hadnot shared the warmth of humanity , the dream of lost peace ,your love and admiration of our brothers in the west bank. Sophie Ramsay is the sister of my teacher Gilbert Ramsay , a former kecturer in the Faculty of Education in Gedaref. She is agraduate of philosophy from Glasgow University in Scotland , and one of powerful female advocates to the end of violence and occupation in Palestine. “My best birth day gift would be a permenent cease fire in Gaza” she said.to celebrants . In the spring of 2017,Sophie was one of prominent singers in a hundred-day tour to promote in the U.K Scottish folk songs about love,loss and home. She sang the lyrics of Anais Mitchell ” A child is born in Bethlehem”” that describes the tragedy of children in Palestine. She and all her family in Dundee took part in a protest against Isreali attrocities committed in Gaza.This year, as she blew out the candle of another safe and beautiful celebration in Bamff, the family resort, she had decided to share with us one of the letters sent on the eve of her birth day by Mosab Abu Toha. That is a Gazan poet and scholar, who was recently detained and badly beaten for the crime of using words to describe his experiences. “”No one is free until everyone is free” Sophie remarked
Here is the poem : “…..At night, at home, we sit on the floor, close to each other and far from the windows and the red lights of bombs.
Our backs bang on the walls whenever the house shakes,we stare at each other’s face,scared and yet hsppy that we were lucky that lives were spared this time.
The walls wake up from their fitful sleep.
Flies gather around the only lit ceiling lamp for warmth in the cold night,,
cold except when missiles hit
and heat up houses and roads and trees,
scorching an adjacent neighborhood.
Every time we hear a bomb
falling from an F-16 or an F-35,
our lives panic. Our lives freeze somewhere in-between, confused where to head next: to a grave-yard to a hospital or to a nightmare,
somewhere in-between, confused
where to head next:
Our lives keep their shivering hands on thier wrist watch, fingers ready to move the batterirs if and when needed.
My four-year-old daughter, Yaffa, in her pink dress, hears a bomb explodes. She breathesi n deep,covers her mouth with her dress’s ruffles,Yazzan, her five and a hakf-year old brother,grabs a blanket warned by his sleepy body.. He lays the blanket on his sister.You can hide now ,he assures her.
As for me and my wife, Maram, we pray thst a magic blanket wiould hide all the houses from the bombs and take us to sonewhere safe.. Mosab Abu Toha has a message:’We are going to celebrate. We will find time for happness because if we, our selves are filled with hate ,how can stand against the tyranny?”His poem is emblematic of Rafeef Ziadah a Canadian-Palestinian artist and activist reply to a journalist who asked her “don’t you think it would all be fine if you just stop teaching your children to hate”. Her response was that : we teach life, sir.!!” .