To Paris, and The World

Paris 13/11/15.

My heart goes out to Paris, my absolute favourite place in the whole world, city of love, city of light. What happened there on Friday was unimaginable, callously cruel, shockingly tragic, an attack on all our liberty.

In saying that, my thoughts also go out to all the other places in the world that daily suffer this awful violence - Beirut recently, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria, whose very name has become a by-word for unspeakable suffering.

The world is, sadly, as this poem so tenderly puts it, hurting everywhere.

What They Did Yesterday Afternoon - Warsan Shire

they set my aunts house on fire
i cried the way women on tv do
folding at the middle
like a five pound note.
i called the boy who use to love me
tried to ‘okay’ my voice
i said hello
he said warsan, what’s wrong, what’s happened?

i’ve been praying,
and these are what my prayers look like;
dear god
i come from two countries
one is thirsty
the other is on fire
both need water.

later that night
i held an atlas in my lap
ran my fingers across the whole world
and whispered
where does it hurt?

it answered
everywhere
everywhere
everywhere.