After Suzanne almost lost her entire family due to a war in her country, she left the damn place for good and moved across the sea. There, alongside with her 4-year-old daughter, she decided to start a new life. What else could she do really? Almost everything she knew and loved was lost, with her daughter being the only seed of joy – a seed Suzanne swore to look out for so that one day, it will grow into a loving human being. A human being incapable of hating other people, a human being capable only of loving. This would be her small contribution to a more hopeful future.
Although they moved from a hellhole, Suzanne realized that didn’t mean they moved to a better place. It was more like moving from an oven to a freezer. Bombs blowing up and guns firing were replaced with people ignoring one another and people who didn’t want to help one another. Because really, who has time to help when you have an oven at home you forgot to turn off? Or even worse, a person that no longer loves you?
Suzanne started thinking about this after she managed to find a place to live. It was a small apartment in an old building, but for her and her daughter, it was more than enough. Few days after moving in, her neighbor frantically knocked on the door asking if Suzanne saw her child. The woman was desperate and Suzanne offered to help her look for the missing child. They soon found her playing in the building’s backyard and luckily, everything turned out all right.
But a few days later, Suzanne had a misfortune of getting robbed. Her wallet was stolen and she barely had money to buy food so she asked the neighbor if she could help her. But, the neighbor furiously rejected saying she just found out her husband cheated on her and how she doesn’t have time to help a lousy immigrant.
This crushed Suzanne to her very core. Not because she expected to have a favor returned, she was crushed by the lack of human decency.
Suzanne started contemplating as she was trying to come up with a meal out of leftovers in the fridge.
“These people never felt the horrors of war and how it only takes few minutes to lose your entire family. Hopefully, they will never have to experience this, but do humans actually need to experience such horrors to appreciate life and other people? She recalled herself before the war and realized she was no better than her neighbor. She often fought with her husband whom, now, she missed so much. She often ignored other people’s sufferings just because she was too busy with herself.”
And then, this dangerous idea came to her mind. Is this the function of war? Is war needed in this world full of hate? Is war, this parade of inhumanity, actually the cure for the very same inhumanity? Why until something truly horrible happens to us, we can’t appreciate and love one another; especially someone we don’t know? Do we need wars, floods, hurricanes and all other horrible events to learn how to care for each other?
Instead of making her feel better, the thought just made Suzanne feel worse as she fell on the kitchen floor crying in despair.
“Why am I still alive? In this world where we need to feel fear, anguish, loss to care for somebody? A flower doesn’t need to be stomped on to grow; a dog doesn’t need to be kicked to death to learn how to live, only humans; only humans need to lose everything they have to appreciate it. And then… then it’s too late. So what’s the point?”
As Suzanne picked herself up, cleaning the tears from her face, she moved to the window through which the sun, the ray of hope was shining. She was living on the 5th floor, which was more than enough for her to finalize her agony. “If life is the agony through which we learn, then death is the final lesson.” She thought to herself while moving closer to the window that seemingly led to hope.
But when she opened the window she saw something. In the building’s backyard, her dark-skinned daughter was bathing in the sunlight and playing with the neighbor’s child. They were smiling as they were digging holes, trying to plant seeds of the peaches they just ate; probably thinking how next day there will be a new tree of peaches to eat. Not a drop of hate could be felt and Suzanne smiled.
“There is hope.”