By Zubeida Jaffer
This year, South Africa’s prolific Sufi poet Shabbir Banoobhai published his 15th book, called Rivers Interrupted. It is book of quiet reflections on life. Allow me to read an excerpt from the last letter in the book.
This is a personal plea as a friend: please do not become complicit or continue to be complicit in the Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, including through your silence. Last night I had a dream. I was talking with a dear friend and told her: ‘I feel so helpless – so ashamed to be a human being,’ then woke up.
What do we do when a nation-state has crossed the line and has gone from not tolerating the existence of others to annihilating them in previously unimaginable ways? What if every attempt to describe the nightmare in words becomes an exercise in futility and the words look at us with glazed eyes, not comprehending what they are meant to convey?
Where do we turn to for support if emphasizing the inhumanity of Israelis towards the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank does not help?
As we struggle to reverse these losses without losing our compassion, we should take shelter deep within the heart of God and remember, despite our grief, despite everything that indicates a nation so far astray from any semblance of humanity and desire to do what is right (except for the courageous and upright) that we are all innately the light of God, even if, for now, Israelis have gone astray.
One day, when their moral compass is restored to them, and they are ashamed of who they have become, we will have to find a way to reintegrate them as our siblings, as hard as that may be to contemplate now.
But first, it is our turn to ask forgiveness for the wrongs we have done or allowed to be done in our name, or the name of our God, by whatever name we call God – the wrongs we have done to our hearts, souls, minds, spirit, and humanity that we have abused or allowed others to abuse – where we have been manipulated, bullied and blinded while an entire country and its people have been obliterated or the stage set for their obliteration.”
In contemplating Shabbir’s words, I have come to the insight that this does not mean we should assist or compromise with evil, or fail to put it down where we have the power. All those years when we worked for an end to apartheid in our country, we did not know from one day to the next what awaited us.
It means we have to be patient and humble where we have no visible power to prevent Evil. And to remember always that, in our limited vision, we can never know with certainty that our actions or words truly have no power.
This meditation was shared with other writers at a reading in solidarity with Gaza, Writing in Troubled Times. Organised by PenSA under the leadership of internationally-known South African poet and academic, Gabeba Baderoon, I publish this as the Global Sumud Flotilla heads for the shores of Gaza and thousands of people march in Cape Town and across the world.
