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elliclermy dad (not really), an old man close to the end of his life, looking back at it with terrible regret. he's crying out (he also has bad dreams - he's seen too much horror, if only as a bystander) - he's defending himself from imaginary reproaches - from God or from his own conscience (i don't think even he knows which). he says, i tried, God knows, i did what i could for them. but he sees: it was too little, a drop in the endless sea of pain and misery. the attention of the world he redirected to his causes, the charity programs he helped fund and lift off the ground, the hospitals and the schools and the supplies he helped carry to the refugees from the war zones (the war zones his country helped erupt and was fighting in). he sees all the people who thanked him tearfully for the smallest help, all the ones who smiled happily, safe for the time being - dead, mutilated, covered in blood, dead. none of what he did ever mattered, in the end, a temporary relief that ran dry the moment he turned his back and went on, to his own home and happy peaceful family, to rest; to the next cause and the next country ravaged by his people, to try and see what happens there, to make himself famous and important in the process, to have a career that is also forgotten now, and nobody remembers today his films his articles the interviews he's taken the money he's earned. none of it ever made a dent in the wall of human misery he's witnessed from the sidelines, and he feels like he never committed himself to stepping into it, into the thick of life, misery, death. he'd be dead now if he did it. but he's dying now, and he wishes it meant something (the way it would've meant something back then) other than that he's come to the end of his road which might've as well never started.
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Date: 2019-09-07 11:17 am (UTC)