No Bears to Protect Those Children

After one month of the Gaza surprise events, I was determined to take a break from watching the horrific news of the bombing of Gaza, its residential sections, schools as well as hospitals.  Not even the church was spared where some of the people whom we knew, and were taking refuge at the church  got killed.  No efforts for the end of the indiscriminate shelling by Israel  with the blessing of the USA and its allies made any difference.  Israel was determined on  “ mowing  the lawn”  a metaphor used to  completely wipe out Gaza.

I had Barbara Kingsolver Small Wonder Essays sitting by my reclining chair for some time now, and had no time for it.  So I decided  that this would be the best time for me to pick it up.

After the introduction, Barbara takes us through the first small wonder taking place in the hills of Lorestan, a  Province of Iran where a small child wandered out of the house without being noticed by the babysitter, and got the whole area searching for him.

 

The parents and the whole community kept banging the doors of hope until one of those doors opened  after three days, and  the child was found in a cave curled around by a bear who apparently was lactating and had fed the child.

 

But the  sad news is that Barbara was reading the story of the child and the bear on the same day that she had read the year’s opening on the bombing campaign in Afghanistan.

 

And here I am reading that story while Gaza is being bombed,  but  there are no bears to protect those children.