A vision through Santa

The long queue of children and parents at Santa clause land in the mall this weekend got me thinking about how lucky these children are. Here they are laughing and excited at the thought of meeting Santa clause, A “terrifying” yet fictional character. I can’t help but get visual images of a boy I saw crying on a news station with the exact same zeal. Except his fear wasn’t based on a fairytale or his imagination his fear was real. A boy crying not because he doesn’t like the sound of the ho ho hoing but because he is now partially deaf in the after math of having had his house brought down to rubble with his family in it. I am constantly surprised to find that children no where old enough to remotely understand the dynamics of politics are the ones who understand the wars best. Their emotions are raw and so real. They do not know who did what to whom or who started how but all they know is that the “war” that the adults speak of… claimed a friends leg making it impossible for him to play soccer on the streets with the rest of them. This “war”, has them playing soldiers and school kids instead of cops and robbers. They do no see that these wars have taken away their childhood and forced many of them to become adults way too soon. That it has forced tears down their cheeks. It has managed to break them in ways unfathomable to many of these kids prancing around santa’s helpers. That this war has made them orphans and worse yet callus and indifferent to the brutality. Its only fit that a picture of a child, namely Hanzala be the visual symbol of the injustice.
“His hands behind his back as a symbol of rejection to all the present negative tides. 'Hanzala', the brain child of the late political cartoonist Nagi el-Ali, has been adopted because he is affectionate, honest, outspoken, and a bum. He is neither beautiful, spoilt, nor even well-fed. He is barefoot like many children in refugee camps. He is the symbol of a just cause and the official logo of the Commission for Freedom and Justice Through Humor, a recently created arm of WATCH and an affiliate of UNESCO.