Need for healing

["Maryanne Stroud Gabbani" <maryanne@ratbusters.net>]

It was about 3:30 pm when we saw what was happening in New York at 8:30 am
and the streets of Cairo were virtually silent while everyone watched in
horror as the buildings fell and New Yorkers wept. Our phone system was a
disaster because there is hardly a citizen of Egypt who doesn't have a
relative in the US...in case New Yorkers never noticed, most of the hot dog
men are Egyptian. I finally got to bed about midnight after sending out
emails and phone calls to family and friends all over the world that my
children and our friends were safe, with the possible exception of my
daughter's Peruvian friend who had been working at the WTC. This morning
still, incomprehension is the primary emotion...How?...Why? It doesn't make
sense.

I went out to the stables and took my 4 yr old out for a training walk. It's
date season and all the farmers are harvesting and sorting their dates for
sale fresh, soft or dry. Our "winter" will come soon and the corn and
sorghum that have been the fresh feed for the horses are getting dry and
being cut in preparation for berseem. The women were washing their clothes
and children chasing goats, but the greetings today were much more subdued
than usual. Even the poorest of the fellaheen have a black and white TV and
they also were watching the events in New York last night. My son called me
at 6 am Cairo time before he went to sleep to say that things had sort of
stabilised and to tell me that an Egyptian friend of his in Washington DC
had been beaten up when someone found out he was an Arab. I told him that
for the next little while he and his sister had better be Greek or Italian,
please. >g< But the lines of Columbia students of every background offering
to give blood yesterday were four hours long. The world is no longer big
enough for this kind of thing. No one can choose to hurt "them" without also
hurting "us". The sorrow on the faces of my farmer friends told me that we
are now all one.

May we soon see an end to this evil and let ALL the children grow up in
peace.

Maryanne Stroud Gabbani
Cairo, Egypt
maryanne@ratbusters.net
www.ratbusters.net